RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany: Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday he is “confident” that Ukraine is prepared to retake more territory as Kyiv readies for a new offensive against Russian forces.
“I’m confident that they will now be in a position to be able to liberate even more land,” Stoltenberg told journalists in Germany when asked if Ukraine has what it needs to successfully execute the offensive.
“One of the main issues here today has been to go through all the different capabilities, systems, supplies that the Ukrainians need to be able to retake more land,” said Stoltenberg, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of dozens of Kyiv’s international supporters at the Ramstein air base.
The Nato chief also said that multiple Patriot air defence batteries had been delivered to Ukraine.
“Germany and the US have now delivered Patriot batteries, which are operational in Ukraine,” he said, declining to provide exact numbers or details.
Kyiv repeatedly pushed for the high-tech system to help shield against Russian strikes, and the Pentagon said in late March that a group of 65 Ukrainian military personnel had completed training on the Patriot in the United States and returned to Europe.
FRUSTATION
EU counterparts blamed France on Friday for delaying approval of a plan for the bloc to jointly buy desperately-needed ammunition for Ukraine.
Kyiv has urged its allies to ramp up supplies of howitzer shells as its forces struggle with shortages in the face of Russia’s grinding assault and prepare to go on the offensive themselves.
The EU agreed in March to a two-billion-euro ($2.2 billion) proposal aimed at supplying a million shells to Ukraine over the next 12 months. A first part of the one billion euro plan to get EU countries to raid their stockpiles urgently for ammunition was signed off last week.
But a second track to jointly purchase another billion euros of shells for Ukraine remains snarled over a dispute about whether they should be wholly manufactured within the EU.
In March, EU leaders agreed to source the ammunition from the “European defence industry” and Norwegian producers, as Oslo is also part of the scheme.
But European diplomats complained that France, a fierce protector of its own defence industry, is now insisting that this means manufacturing must be entirely done inside the EU.
That would exclude shells made in plants outside Europe, such as the one majority-owned by German giant Rheinmetall in Australia. Diplomats from several EU states said there were doubts as to whether EU producers could make enough arms without recourse to outside suppliers. — Agencies
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
