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Ukraine will get more ammunition for its long attacks. French President Emmanuel Macron announced late Tuesday that Paris would supply Kiev with another four dozen SCALP-EG missiles, the French equivalent of Britain’s Storm Shadow missiles.
So far, Ukraine has used this type of cruise missile mainly to attack targets in occupied Crimea, where it destroyed several valuable Russian ships, a Kilo-class submarine, the headquarters building of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and drove Russian warships largely out of Sevastopol more distant ports.
It was supposed to receive 50 of them from France in the first batch. It is not known how many rockets arrived from London. In addition, Kiev was to acquire an unknown number of American ATACMS missiles, which were first used in the attack on Russian air bases in Luhansk and Berdian last October.
It is not known how many missiles Ukraine has already fired and how many remain. In any case, there is agreement that these missiles are among the main types of weapons that Kiev needs most.
The server War Zone, which specializes in military affairs, adds that long-range missiles were the architect of perhaps the Ukrainian army’s greatest successes last year. Since the counteroffensive in the summer did not go as expected, the aforementioned attacks on Russian targets in Crimea are considered such.
More on the Ukrainian attacks in Crimea
In recent months, Ukraine has had a number of successes in long-range attacks on Russian targets in Crimea, which we have repeatedly reported on:
Waiting for the German
There has been talk since the summer at the latest that Germany could also supply Ukraine with long-range missiles. Specifically, these are Taurus missiles, which, according to previous reports, Berlin wanted to modify so that they have a shorter range and Ukraine could not use them – like the other types of missiles delivered – for attacks deep in Russian territory.
The latest development in this protracted debate was the non-binding vote by the Bundestag, which voted against the delivery by an overwhelming majority of 485 votes to 178. However, the Politico server pointed out that Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who did not have to worry about the outcome of the vote, had the final say.
He has rejected this in the past, but there is speculation that France’s move could help Germany join in the supplies at some point. Scholz also recently called on all European countries to increase their support for Ukraine, as the planned deliveries from most countries were not enough.
Germany is at the forefront of European countries in providing military aid to Ukraine and is also the second largest supplier overall – after the USA. According to analysts at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, German military aid to Ukraine amounts to over 17 billion euros, while for France, for example, it is only around 0.5 billion euros.
According to a recent report in the Financial Times, Brussels is also preparing an official overview that will show how many EU member states have sent weapons to Ukraine. The European External Action Service (EEAS) is working on it and should be ready before the crisis summit planned for February 1st.
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