Berlin steps up as Ukraine prepares for new Russian offensive
Russia has amassed around 50,000 troops near Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region ahead of a planned large-scale offensive, warned Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky today from Berlin, where he held an “emergency meeting” with his German counterpart, Friedrich Merz.
Sumy lies across the border from Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces held chunks of land after they launched their cross-border incursion back in August, before being largely driven out last month.
According to Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov, four villages in the area have been captured by Russian forces this week - Novenke, Basivka, Veselivka and Zhuravka - although residents had long been evacuated. The Sumy region has been pounded for months by Russian strikes.
While Moscow’s offensive activity is largely concentrated in Ukraine’s south-eastern Donetsk region, this advance further north shows that Ukrainian forces are being stretched on multiple fronts.
Aside from land advances, Moscow also staged its largest drone assault on Ukraine over the weekend since it began its full-scale war over three years ago.
Ukraine has responded by launching dozens of long-range drones into Russia in recent days, forcing some airports in Moscow to temporarily close.
Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have brought the two sides any closer to peace.
Amid Putin’s ongoing refusal to agree even to an initial 30-day ceasefire, Kyiv’s European allies are stepping up their support.
Merz - who announced earlier this week that there were “no longer” be any range restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons supplied by Western allies - added today that Berlin would help Ukrainians to produce their own long-range missiles inside Ukraine. He also unveiled a new military aid package for Kyiv worth 5 billion euros.
The Chancellor’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz, was wary about removing range limits on German-supplied weapons, fearful that giving Kyiv the green light to strike military targets deep inside Russia would be a dangerous escalation. But Merz appears readier to make bold announcements that risk antagonising Putin in contrast to the cautious tone of the last government.
And, though the “Zeitenwende” (turning point) in German defence policy was announced under Scholz who created a €100bn special fund to buy defence equipment, Merz has gone further by taking the major step of reforming Germany's constitutionally enshrined spending limit, known as the “debt brake”, primarily in order to boost defence.
In his first major speech to parliament last week, Merz vowed to build up Europe’s “strongest conventional army”. Laying out Berlin’s plans to boost defense spending, he insisted: “This is appropriate for Europe’s most populous and economically powerful country. Our friends and partners also expect this from us. Indeed, they practically demand it.”
Last week, Merz and German defence minister Boris Pistorious visited Lithuania to attend a ceremony, marking the launch of Berlin’s first permanent foreign troop deployment since the Second World War: an armoured brigade of 4,800 German soldiers, aimed at protecting Nato’s eastern flank. Pistorious labelled the Lithuania brigade “a clear signal to any potential adversary” that Germany’s government is serious about its pledge to be “ready to defend every square inch of Nato territory”.
As a Trump-led US retreats from its European security responsibilities, Merz’s government is keen to demonstrate that the continent’s biggest economy is rising to the occasion and stepping up.
Some analysts have also pointed out that Germans feel even more vulnerable to Russian aggression than those in France and the UK because it is the only one of the three powers that lacks any nuclear weapons of its own. Germany has lived under the US nuclear shield for decades. Up to 20 US nuclear weapons are stationed at a Bundeswehr airbase in Büchel in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Yet only the US president has the code to release them.
Caitlin Allen
Deputy Editor
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