Germany announced this Friday that it will send 40 Marder armored vehicles to the Ukrainian army in the coming months, shortly after the US announced a new phase in military aid to Kiev.
“40 vehicles will be ready in the first quarter of this year and can be sent to Ukraine after eight weeks of training”informed Steffen Hebestreit, spokesman for the German government.
On Thursday, United States President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced the deployment of infantry fighting vehicles to support Ukrainian troops against the Russian military, but without clarifying the volume and dispatch schedule.
That news angered the Russian embassy in Berlin, which condemned the extradition, saying it contributed to an “escalation of the conflict in Ukraine”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already said during a telephone conversation that he thanked the German Chancellor for this gesture.
The United States will provide Bradley vehicles armed with automatic cannons, machine guns and anti-tank missiles, while Germany will send Marders equipped with guns.
In recent months, Ukraine’s European allies have supplied Soviet-built tanks, but never Western-built ones, despite repeated requests from Kiev.
So far, the German government has refused to hand over tanks, arguing that such a measure should be decided in consultation with Western allies and that Germany and NATO should not be directly involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
But pressure on Berlin increased when Paris promised Ukraine to supply French-made AMX-10 RC light tanks in response to Kiev’s needs to face the Russian military.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24 has so far led to the flight of more than 14 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced people and more than 7.9 million to European countries -, according to the latest data from the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
Currently, 17.7 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russian security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending arms to Ukraine and impose political and economic sanctions on Russia.
The UN presented 6,919 dead civilians and 11,075 wounded as confirmed since the start of the war, underlining that these numbers are well below the actual ones.
Source: DN
