Bloomberg: Germany is pressuring the US to hand over one more Patriot system to Ukraine

The German government is pressuring the US to transfer at least one more Patriot air defense system to Ukraine, which will help close the gap in Ukrainian air defense.

Bloomberg writes about this with reference to sources.

In addition to the United States, Germany is also putting pressure on France and Italy to assess their ability to strengthen Ukrainian air defense. Berlinʼs actions are part of a coordinated effort to pressure its European Union and NATO partners to provide Ukraine with more air defense equipment as Russia steps up its attacks.

Bloonberg claims that Germanyʼs increased rhetoric regarding the transfer of air defense equipment to Ukraine comes as Chancellor Olaf Scholz is delaying the delivery of long-range Taurus missiles, explaining that this could allegedly drag Germany into war.

Recently, the German government took the initiative to strengthen Ukrainian air defense. And already on April 13, Germany announced that it would transfer to Ukraine another Patriot launcher and ammunition for existing air defense systems. After the meeting of the European Council, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz emphasized that Berlin is looking for six more Patriot air defense systems in addition to the one previously promised to transfer to Germany.

• The authorities of Ukraine have been calling on allies for several weeks in a row to help with air defense systems and ammunition for them. There was a shortage in the troops, due to which Russian missile and drone attacks began to penetrate the defenses.
• On April 16, President Zelensky spoke about a significant shortage of anti-aircraft defense and the corresponding missiles. As an example, he cited the missile attack on the Trypilska TPP — it was attacked by 11 missiles, Ukraine was able to destroy seven of them, and four hit the target simply because the anti-aircraft defense ran out of missiles.