BERLIN, July 1. /TASS/. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said that he discussed with Vladimir Zelensky the issue of training the Ukrainian military to handle Taurus cruise missiles.

"We have not yet agreed on that. I spoke with Zelensky about this. I spoke with the [ruling] coalition about this," he said in an interview with the ARD television channel.

"We have not yet begun this [training]," he said, adding that "this has been and continues to be an option."

"It has always been clear that if we supply Taurus’, these weapons will be operated not by the German military but by the Ukrainians, as in the case with other cruise missiles that are supplied from the United Kingdom and France," Merz said. In his words, Taurus is "a very complicated system." "At least six months are needed to train soldiers to operate them," he said, adding that Berlin will not be announcing its military aid to Kiev publicly, to keep Moscow in the dark.

Ukraine has been asking Germany to supply Taurus missiles for quite a long time. These missiles are considered similar to British Storm Shadows, which have already been delivered to Ukraine. However, Taurus’ have a longer range than Storm Shadow.

Germany’s Taurus supplies to Ukraine will wreck relations between Moscow and Berlin but won't stop the Russian army’s advance along the entire line of engagement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with the heads of the world's leading news agencies organized by TASS.