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German Defense Minister arrives on unannounced visit to Odessa — media

Christine Lambrecht promised to deliver IRIS-T SLM air defense systems to Kiev ‘in the coming days’

BERLIN, October 2. /TASS/. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht arrived on Saturday on an unannounced visit to Odessa, where she met with her Ukrainian counterpart Alexey Reznikov and promised to deliver IRIS-T SLM air defense systems to Kiev ‘in the coming days’, the Welt TV channel reported.

According to it, Lambrecht stressed that Ukraine was facing an incredible amount of air attacks at the moment, which is why it was so importantto provide even more support with regard to air defense.·

"We will support our friends for as long as it takes," the German Defense Ministry noted on Twitter, confirming the visit.·

According to the DPA news agency, during her meeting with Reznikov, Lambrecht reacted cautiously to Ukraine's call to declare Russia a terrorist state, but spoke in favor of imposing new sanctions against Russia. "This is the right way to go," the DPA quoted her as saying. The minister also expressed understanding of Ukraine's desire to join NATO as soon as possible, but reminded that this requires meeting a number of certain conditions.

·Lambrecht stressed that "NATO has taken a clear position" on Ukraine. "We will not become a party to the conflict. We’ve made that clear at the beginning of this conflict and we will stick to it from now on," she asserted.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation in Ukraine following a request for assistance from the leaders of the Donbass republics. After that, the US, the EU, the UK, as well as a number of other countries imposed sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities. In addition, Western countries began to supply arms and military equipment to Kiev worth billions of dollars at this stage.