Missiles, rocket launchers, machine guns… European countries, long reluctant to deliver arms to Ukraine, have finally been convinced by the violence of the Russian invasion, even if their first shipments seem meager in the face of the power of fire from Moscow.
At the end of January, when more than 150,000 Russian soldiers were already massed on the Ukrainian border, the German government, camped on its traditional positions hostile to arms deliveries, had drawn ridicule by announcing the supply of 5,000 military helmets in Kyiv.
Three days after the Russian invasion, the situation has changed.
Germany broke a taboo by agreeing to deliver arms to Ukraine at war, thus breaking its policy of banning all exports of lethal weapons to conflict zones.
Berlin has authorized the delivery to Kiev of 1,000 anti-tank rocket launchers, 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles and 9 howitzers, the government announced.
Germany also announced the shipment to Ukraine of 14 armored vehicles as well as 10,000 tons of fuel. “Other support measures are currently being studied,” said a government source.
Saturday evening France announced in turn that it had taken the decision to deliver more military defense equipment to Ukraine.
During a defense council meeting at the Elysée around President Emmanuel Macron, “it was decided to deliver additional defense equipment to the Ukrainian authorities as well as fuel support”, indicated the presidency.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces had previously indicated that it had “acted” on deliveries of defensive weapons to Kiev, Ukraine having in particular, according to its ambassador in Paris, requested “means of anti-aircraft protection” and digital.
“The anti-war coalition is working,” rejoiced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a long-time critic of Western wait-and-see attitude, on Saturday. “Weapons and equipment from our partners are on their way to Ukraine,” he said on Twitter.
Earlier Saturday, Belgium announced to provide 2,000 machine guns and 3,800 tons of fuel to the Ukrainian army. The Dutch Ministry of Defense said it had “shipped some of the already promised goods on Saturday, including sniper rifles and helmets”.
In a letter to the Dutch parliament, he further wrote that he would supply “as soon as possible 200 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine”.
nothing too much
The Czech Republic, which had already approved a donation to Kiev of 4,000 artillery shells, announced on Saturday that it would send “in the coming hours” to Ukraine an arsenal of 30,000 pistols, 7,000 assault rifles, 3,000 machine guns and several dozen sniper rifles as well as a million cartridges.
Poland, for its part, sent tens of thousands of ammunition to neighboring Ukraine.
“The difficulty of this case is that no one believed” in a Russian invasion of all Ukrainian territory, said General Vincent Desportes, former director of the prestigious French War School, interviewed by AFP.
Now, “everyone does what he can” and “nobody has billions of armaments too many. All the European armies are under-equipped”, he continues, when 200,000 Russians assisted by ballistic missiles besiege Ukraine.
“When you send 2,000 machine guns, you take them from your own stock. […] European armies are poor armies. We have no equipment, no money,” notes Mr. Desportes.
Better equipped militarily, the United States could make a bigger difference, they who announced on Saturday new military aid to Ukraine in the amount of 350 million dollars, to reach a total of “more than a billion aid dollars […] over the past year,” their head of diplomacy Antony Blinken announced on Saturday.
But “the roads are completely blocked, the airports bombarded. When you have weapons in Baltimore, they are not exactly in Kiev,” remarks General Desportes.
Asked about the subject, a Western diplomat based in Brussels wanted to be more optimistic on Friday, “many allied leaders” within NATO being eager according to him to provide military equipment “as much as possible” to Ukraine.
And to add: “It is in our interest to try to slow down the Russian advance as much as possible, and that it be as costly as possible for Putin”.