German Chancellor Touts Difficult Decision on Patriot

 Berlin’s decision to pledge a third Patriot missile system to Kiev was a difficult one and will hopefully move other European nations to donate more arms, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said.
The German leader met his counterparts from the five Nordic nations on Monday at a summit in Stockholm. Speaking at a joint press conference with the prime ministers of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland, Scholz reiterated his vow to “support Ukraine for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia, RT reported.

Kiev has been complaining that the shortage of Western air defense systems leaves its troops and infrastructure exposed to long-range attacks by Russia. President Vladimir Zelensky has said his military needed as many as 25 of the US-made Patriot systems, each of which costs more than $1 billion.

The decision to provide an additional Patriot battery, which was announced in April, “was not that easy, because we don’t have too many of them,” Scholz told journalists. The German example should make other donors more generous, he added, because “in the end we need a lot of munitions, artillery, tanks, and air defenses.”