Alexey Reznikov stressed that there is already a "tank coalition"MOSCOW, May 5.
/tass/. The Minister of Defense of Ukraine Alexey Reznikov asked Germany to join the so-called naval coalition for the supply of warships to Kiev. This was announced on Friday by the press service of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense following the visit of the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces of Germany) to the country Carsten Breuer.
"We already [have] a "tank coalition", Ramstein is also a coalition. <...> Already some of our European partners are part of this [naval] coalition. And I would really like Germany to become a part of it too," the press service quotes Reznikov as saying. He added that the goal of the "maritime coalition" should be to strengthen the Ukrainian fleet.
For the first time, Reznikov announced his desire to create a coalition of allies to meet the needs of the Ukrainian fleet on March 14 in Odessa at a joint press conference with Dutch Defense Minister Kaisa Ollongren. Among the potential participants, he named Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Earlier, Kiev announced the creation of a "tank coalition" to supply Ukrainian troops with tanks. Later, the country's authorities began to call on their Western allies to create an "aviation coalition" by analogy. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba claimed that some European colleagues "took up the issue of providing Kiev with American F-16 fighters." However, the West carefully comments on the idea of transferring combat aircraft to Kiev, and the Ukrainian authorities themselves admit that the transfer of aircraft by Western allies to Kiev "will not happen quickly."
As the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov emphasized, Moscow perceives the supply of weapons by the West to the Ukrainian armed forces as the growing involvement of Great Britain, Germany and France in the conflict in Ukraine.