Ukraine officially requests Taurus cruise missiles from Germany

Ukraine has officially requested Germany to provide it with Taurus cruise missiles.

Source: Spiegel; Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

Details: Spiegel reports that Germany has recently received a request for the Taurus from the Ukrainian side.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung writes that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke about the supply of German missiles to Ukraine in Berlin in early May.

For reference: The Taurus cruise missile is launched from a fighter jet and can deliver a 400 kg warhead over 500 kilometres. The missile is considered an effective weapon against protected targets such as command bunkers or storage points. The Taurus missile is the German equivalent of the UK Storm Shadow.

Background:

• Roderich Kiesewetter, a defence spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) faction, which is in opposition to the Scholz government, spoke in favour of supplying Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles.

• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius commented cautiously on the proposal to supply Ukraine with Taurus.

• Ben Wallace, the UK Defence Secretary, believes that the long-range Storm Shadow missiles allow Ukraine to partially compensate for the lack of modern combat fighters, which it has not yet been provided with.

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