German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday morning and made a plea for more international support to protect the country\u2019s skies from Russian airstrikes. \u201cTo protect Ukraine from the hail of Russian missiles and drones, it urgently needs more air defense,\u201d she said at the start of her seventh visit to Ukraine since the all-out war erupted in February 2022. Her trip had not been announced for security reasons. Baerbock said that Kyiv\u2019s allies must \u201cjoin forces\u201d both for Ukraine\u2019s sake and to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from sending troops to \u201cour borders.\u201d<\/p>\n
She noted that a German-led initiative aimed at building up Ukraine\u2019s air defenses has raised almost $1 billion. \u201cAnd we are working hard to ensure that this will be even more,\u201d the minister said. \u201cWe are turning over every stone several times and have even gone ahead with an additional Patriot unit.\u201d Ukraine has been on the back foot for months due to shortages of equipment, ammunition and soldiers in the war\u2019s third year. The large city of Kharkiv in the north-east of the country, not far from the Russian border, is being bombarded daily. Russian ground forces have also been advancing into the broader Kharkiv region.<\/p>\n
Baerbock had to cancel a planned visit to Kharkiv on Tuesday due to the Russian attacks. She had visited the city, which was heavily attacked by Russian troops at the beginning of the war, in January 2023. Shortly before Baerbock\u2019s visit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky once again stressed the urgency of getting air defense systems and Western fighter jets to his country.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, the free world lacks speed on these two issues,\u201d he said on Monday evening. Zelensky has repeatedly requested the delivery of two more Patriot air defense systems to protect Kharkiv. Ukraine reportedly has three of the most powerful US-made air defense systems. The German government has provided two of them and recently promised a third unit. The other Patriot unit currently active in Ukraine comes from the US. Washington is considering the delivery of a further system. German attempts to procure Patriots from partner countries in Europe or overseas have not been successful so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday morning and made a plea for more international support to\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":44953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[13191,13215,923,919,14256,265,14258,470,7977,499,14257],"class_list":["post-44952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-air-defenses","tag-german-foreign-minister-annalena-baerbock","tag-germany","tag-international-support","tag-missile-systems","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-shortages-of-equipment","tag-ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky","tag-us-patriot-missile-systems","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-weapons-deliveries"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}