Ukraine has made an official request to Germany to provide it with Taurus cruise missiles.
Source. This was reported by Ukrayinska Pravda with reference to the German publications Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
The German Ministry of Defense confirmed the receipt of the request, without specifying how many missiles Kyiv is counting on, DW reports.
According to Spiegel, the request for Taurus missiles came in recent days, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung sources said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the possibility of supplying German missiles with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin in early May.
The range of these precision guided missiles is up to 500 km, DW notes. They are launched from a fighter jet, like the British Storm Shadow.
Britain became the first country to supply Ukraine with the longer-range Storm Shadow missile, which has a range of more than 250 km. Last week, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed that Ukraine has already used the Storm Shadow missiles it received.
The Taurus is "basically a German-Swedish analog of the Franco-British Storm Shadow missile," the Ukrainian newspaper Obozrevatel wrote this week, commenting on reports of a possible delivery of these cruise missiles.
Background. As a reminder, the German parliament has called for long-range missiles with a range of up to 500 kilometers to be provided to Ukraine.