In the Ukraine conflict, the German government wants to deliver a field hospital to Kiev, but continues to reject arms deliveries. In February, "a complete field hospital will be handed over, including the necessary training, all co-financed by Germany with 5.3 million euros," German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper."

He added that Germany has also already supplied respirators and is treating seriously injured soldiers from Ukraine in Bundeswehr hospitals. He said the German government must do everything it can to de-escalate the crisis situation. "Supplying weapons would not be helpful at the moment - that is the consensus within the German government," the SPD politician stressed.

The "seriousness of the situation" demands an immediate rethink and a change of course on the issue of arms deliveries to Ukraine, Ukrainian Ambassador Andrij Melnyk demanded in the "Handelsblatt". His country will "not rest in convincing the German government and the opposition to deliver defensive weapons to Ukraine."

At the moment, the country is not even concerned about weapons, but about equipment for "the volunteers who are just signing up for the Landwehr to defend their homeland together with the armed forces," Melnyk continued. For them, he said, Ukraine urgently needs 100,000 helmets and protective vests.

Meanwhile, the United States has sent new military aid to Ukraine. On Saturday night, a U.S. cargo plane landed at an airport in the capital, Kiev, according to the U.S. Embassy there on the short message service Twitter. On board, it said, was 90 tons of cargo, including ammunition "for frontline defense." This support had been ordered by U.S. President Joe Biden, it said.

The embassy published pictures showing the plane being unloaded. It was the first of several deliveries, it said. This "demonstrates the United States' strong commitment to Ukraine's sovereign right to self-defense."

Russia had repeatedly called on Ukraine not to arm itself further because this would fuel military tensions and could encourage the country to attack the Donbass region in the east of the ex-Soviet republic, for example, in order to take back the breakaway parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions there. Just Friday, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken met for crisis talks in Geneva.

Most recently, the Kremlin had sharply criticized the supply of light anti-tank weapons from Britain to Ukraine. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania now also want to send U.S.-made anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine. The background to this is the severe tensions in the Ukraine conflict and fears in the West that Russia could attack the neighboring country. Moscow has already rejected this on several occasions.

Photo by Andrey Metelev