U.S., Germany promise more, better weapons
KYIV, Ukraine — The U.S. and Germany pledged on Wednesday to equip Ukraine with some of the advanced weapons it has long desired for shooting down aircraft and knocking out artillery, as Russian forces closed in on capturing a key city in the east.
Germany said it will supply Ukraine with up-to-date antiaircraft missiles and radar systems, while the U.S. announced it will provide four sophisticated, medium-range rocket systems and ammunition.
The U.S. is trying to help Ukraine fend off the Russians without triggering a wider war in Europe. The Pentagon said it received assurances that Ukraine will not fire the new rockets into Russian territory.
The Kremlin accused the U.S. of “pouring fuel on the fire.”
Western arms have been critical to Ukraine’s success in stymieing Russia’s much larger and better-equipped military, thwarting its effort to storm the capital and forcing Moscow to shift its focus to the industrial Donbas region in the east.
But as Russia bombards towns in its inching advance in the east, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly pleaded for more and better weapons and accused the West of moving too slowly.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, hailed the new Western weapons.
“I’m sure that if we receive all the necessary weapons and strengthen the efficient sanctions
regime we will win,” he said.
The new arms could help Ukraine set up and hold new lines of defense in the east by hitting back at Russian artillery pieces that have been battering towns and cities and by limiting Russian air strikes, said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.
Military analysts say Russia
is hoping to overrun the Donbas before any weapons that might turn the tide arrive. It will take at least three weeks to get the precision U.S. weapons and trained troops onto the battlefield, the Pentagon said. But Defense Undersecretary Colin Kahl said he believes they will arrive in time to make a difference.
Germany’s promise of IRIS-T air defense systems would mark the first delivery
of long-range air defense weapons to Ukraine since the start of the war. Earlier deliveries of portable, shoulderfired air defense missiles have bolstered the Ukrainian military’s ability to take down helicopters and other lowflying aircraft but didn’t give it enough range to challenge Russia’s air superiority.