“The United States will not allow Ukraine to fail,” promised this Tuesday the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, when opening the work of a new meeting of allied countries to coordinate military aid to Kyiv, which is being held at the US air base in Ramstein (Germany) and will conclude this afternoon. Before defense ministers and chiefs of staff of almost 50 allied countries, Austin stressed that “this coalition” and “the free world” will not allow Ukraine to fail in the war it has been waging for more than two years against the large-scale Russian invasion. scale.
The promise comes when the Ukrainian army accuses the lack of weapons and the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, asks the allies to send them long-range artillery – especially to Germany, from which he requests Taurus cruise missiles -, and when the package of US military aid of around 60 billion dollars (about 55.3 billion euros) has been blocked in Congress for months due to the veto of some Republican parliamentarians, including the president of the chamber, Mike Johnson.
In this context, the White House warned that an endowment of 300 million dollars (274 million euros) for Ukraine, raised thanks to savings obtained in recent Pentagon purchases, which was announced last week, will only be enough for a few weeks of combat. “We are determined to provide Ukraine with all the resources it needs to resist Russian aggression,” Austin assured reporters in Ramstein. Washington remains by far the largest donor of military aid to Kyiv.
As is usual in the Ramstein format, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Rustem Umérov, also participated. For Spain there was Admiral Juan Francisco Martínez, Secretary General of Defense Policy. These periodic meetings of the so-called Contact Group in support of Ukraine began two months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and this is the twentieth. They are not always celebrated in Ramstein; some have taken place in Brussels.
Last Friday in Berlin, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the creation of a coalition of allies to send long-range artillery to Ukraine within the club of countries. of Ramstein. At the same time, Scholz continues to refuse to supply Kyiv with German-made Taurus long-range missiles. The Taurus have a range of 500 kilometers, that is, they could reach targets on Russian soil, and that explains the reluctance of the German Government, which fears that the Ukrainian army will use them in that sense.
