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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Sunday that Kyiv and its Western supporters could make a Russian defeat in the war in Ukraine “irreversible” as early as this year and thanked Germany for being a “true friend” during a visit to Berlin.
Zelenskiy secured a large military boost on his visit, with the German government announcing a 2.7 billion euro ($3 billion) of military aid to Ukraine on Saturday, its biggest such package since Russia’s invasion in February last year.
“Now is the time for us to determine the end of the war already this year, we can make the aggressor’s defeat irreversible already this year,” he said during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Scholz, meanwhile, underscored Germany’s pledge to continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary, brushing aside a question about earlier tensions in bilateral relations and side-stepping another question about Kyiv’s hopes to join NATO.
Germany, which is Europe’s largest economy, faced criticism at the start of the war for what some called a hesitant response, but it has become one of Ukraine’s biggest providers of financial and military assistance.
