Germany to help Ukraine make more weapons to strengthen hand in peace talks
'We see our task as helping Ukraine so that it can negotiate more strongly,' foreign minister Johann Wadephul said during a visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Monday accompanied by German defence industry representatives.
US-led international peace efforts have failed to make progress on halting the fighting.
Our institutions are working on the synchronization of European and Ukrainian sanctions. We are also fully aligning the European sanctions package targeting the regime in Iran, which includes numerous individuals, companies, and entities not only involved in military production… pic.twitter.com/cdUdJnbeo7
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 29, 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin has effectively rejected a ceasefire and has not budged from his war goals.
'When Putin speaks of peace today, it is pure mockery,' Mr Wadephul told a news conference with Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha.
'His apparent readiness to negotiate is only a facade so far.'
Russia's invasion shows no sign of letting up.
Its grinding war of attrition along the roughly 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line and long-range strikes on civilian areas of Ukraine have killed thousands of troops and civilians.
Ukraine is outgunned and short-handed on the front line and international aid has been vital for Ukraine's resistance against its neighbour's bigger army and economy.
Germany has been Ukraine's second-largest military backer after the United States, whose continuing support is in doubt.
'We want to build new joint ventures so that Ukraine itself can produce faster and more for its own defence, because your needs are enormous,' Mr Wadephul said while standing next to Mr Sybiha.
'Our arms cooperation is a real trump card — it is a logical continuation of our delivery of material,' Mr Wadephul said.
'And we can even benefit mutually from it — with your wealth of ideas and your experience, we will become better.'
Mr Wadephul was also due to meet with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The top German diplomat's trip to Kyiv came less than 48 hours after Russia launched its biggest combined aerial attack against Ukraine over the weekend, Ukrainian officials said, in an escalating bombing campaign that has further dashed hopes for a breakthrough in peace efforts.
Ukraine's air force said on Monday it detected 107 Russian Shahed and decoy drones in the country's air space overnight.
Strikes in Ukraine's north-eastern Kharkiv region left two civilians dead and eight injured, including a six-year-old child, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Monday.
The aerial onslaughts are calculated by Russia to squeeze Ukraine into submission, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
'Russia is continuing to use increasingly large numbers of drones in its overnight strike packages in order to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences and enable subsequent cruise and ballistic missile strikes,' the Washington-based think tank said late on Sunday.
'The increases in Russia's strike packages in recent weeks are largely due to Russia's efforts to scale up its defence industrial production, particularly of Shahed and decoy drones and ballistic missiles,' the institute added.
Mr Sybiha thanked Germany for its contribution to Ukraine's air defence and urged Berlin to send more anti-missile systems.
The Russians 'are attacking civilian targets in order to create panic, to influence the mood of our population', he said. 'The key is the air defence system.'
Berlin has balked at granting Mr Zelensky's request to provide Ukraine with powerful German and Swedish-made Taurus long-range missiles, which could potentially hit targets inside Russia.
That is due to fears such a move could enrage the Kremlin and draw Nato into Europe's biggest conflict since the Second World War.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pledged in May to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any Western-imposed limitations on their use and targets.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
I've experienced nightly attacks by Iranian drones and their despotic regime deserves no sympathy
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... They say never to judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. You might also want to hold off on judgment from what I'm about to say until you've lived under bombing yourself: Israel and the United States were right to bomb Iran, it's only a shame they didn't achieve more substantial results. I'm saying this as someone who's endured night after night of attacks by Iranian Shahed drones in Ukraine. Before the pearl-clutching becomes too constricting, let me reassure you that this is no revenge fantasy, or an expression of hatred for the Iranian people. They have languished under the regime of the mullahs for too long. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The regime itself, however, is as cartoonishly evil as it gets and deserves no legitimacy, or sympathy. Its malign influence extends far from Tehran to Kyiv and even Edinburgh. Iran has supplied Shahed type 131 and 136 drones to Russia since the autumn of 2022 with the full knowledge that these weapons would be used to target civilians. They have limited battlefield use and are weapons of pure terror, much like the German V1 and V2 rockets during the Second World War. The aftermath of a drone strike in Kharkiv on May 30 (Picture: Sergey Bobok) | AFP via Getty Images Dreading the late-night lawnmower Regimes like Iran's and Russia's should be fought, and any action towards their overthrowing should be welcomed, even if it comes from quarters unpalatable to the Scottish body politic, like Israel. Justification for the regime's overthrow for its actions against its own people and in the countries of the Middle East abound; its actions in Ukraine are reason enough too. Since 2022, Moscow has launched 28,743 Shahed-type drones against Ukraine — with 2,736, or roughly 9.5 per cent, fired in June this year alone. Though many are now manufactured in Russia under the name Geran 1/Geran 2, Iranian design, manufacturing and maintenance expertise remain vitally important to their operation . Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Imagine lying in your bed late at night, you've heard the air-raid siren go off but you're shattered, sleep-deprived from previous air raids or hot nights without electricity. You drift back to sleep, until the loud cracks of anti-aircraft fire wake you up again. Then you hear the growl, a buzzing noise overhead that sounds like a lawnmower on its last legs. That's the Shahed, and if you can hear it, it's very close, maybe even over your apartment building. As awful the sound is, in that moment you pray you continue to hear it, because if it suddenly cuts out that growl might have been the last thing you ever hear as it drops on top of you. That is the reality of living under Shahed drone attacks, a reality that most Ukrainians have had to face for three years now. Thousands have lost their homes, their loved ones and their lives as a result of this terror bombing. Airstrikes or any other form of military campaign that halt Iran's support for Russia, even incrementally or momentarily, or result in the regime's eventual downfall, should be welcomed. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Shahed-136 'Kamikaze' drones like this one have been used extensively to attack Ukrainian cities in a way reminiscent of the Nazis' use of V2 rockets to attack London during the Second World War (Picture: Anonymous / Middle East Images) | Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Iran's interference in Scottish politics Don't feel any sympathy for its wretched government; you are an enemy or a target for manipulation as much as any Ukrainian. The fact that a number of pro-independence X accounts mysteriously went dark after an Israeli airstrike on June 13, which caused an internet blackout that affected 95 per cent of national connectivity, should not come as a surprise. Iran sees us as a target whether we're nationalists or unionists, their aim is to merely stoke division. With that being said, and while I wouldn't be surprised if some fringe pro-UK accounts are also run by the regime's security forces, Iranian interference in Scottish constitutional matters would be welcomed by some on the pro-independence lunatic left, the types for whom Scottish identity is merely a means to an end, an extension of class warfare. Believers in mere 'whataboutism', where any cause, any regime and any atrocity can be justified so long as it is ostensibly opposed to American imperialism or the dreaded 'Zionists', this leftist fringe is no stranger to supporting Iran. One of its darlings, former British diplomat and Israel-obsessed grievance-grifter Craig Murray, is well known to the regime's state media . This is the same Murray who has backed Putin's invasion of Ukraine, claimed the Ukrainian state tolerates a 'current strain of Nazism in Ukrainian nationalism', and regurgitated the baseless lie that Russian language speakers in the country's east were being subjected to genocide. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Such views are a calumny, demonstrably false and ridiculous as anyone who has actually been to Ukraine can attest. Murray also believes that despotic regimes like Iran are entitled to defend themselves, while countries like Ukraine are apparently not. Such views are those of a fringe, granted, and are demonstrably false and usually motivated by either ill-placed grievance or attention-seeking behaviour, but nonetheless, they are there. They represent the very worst of Scottish politics, a hateful cancer on the independence movement that distorts truth to suit their own aims. That Iran facilitates the terror bombing of one country, Ukraine, while supporting malcontents in ours who condemn the victims of that terror as Nazis, highlights the unscrupulousness of both. Do not give Iran, nor its stooges, any of your sympathy, wherever they may be. The country's leaders are happy to weaponise social media manipulation and bad-faith actors in our body politic, and any time they receive a bloody nose should be welcomed. Wait until you've lived under a Shahed's growl before you think otherwise.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
How Scottish women led the fight to save their factories in the 1980s
THE early 1980s were a period of widespread closures in industry and Scotland suffered the accelerated deindustrialisation of its economy. In 1981, three multinational companies decided they would end production and relocate elsewhere. Lee Jeans, the US-owned firm which had a factory in Greenock announced its closure in February 1981; in October of the same year, Lovable, a US-owned lingerie company said it was closing its factory in Cumbernauld, and the Plessey Company, a British-owned multinational; decided to shut its Bathgate plant where it made capacitors – an electronic component that stores electrical energy in an electric field in December. At each site, the predominantly female workforce resisted, launching factory occupations, barricading themselves inside along with stock and machinery. They argued that the closures were motivated by corporate greed and that the decisions breached the moral economy of industrial communities. All were, to varying degrees, successful and production continued. Andy Clark (Image: Supplied) I spoke to historian Andy Clark about his book: Fighting Deindustrialisation: Scottish Women's Factory Occupations, 1981-1982. First, I asked him to tell me about how his own life experience and circumstances have influenced the kind of history he studies. He said: 'Many historians are interested in knowing more about their communities and how the places where we live and work in came to be how they are. 'I was born and brought up in Greenock and have always been fascinated by the history of the town and the broader Clydeside area, from ancient times to the present, and particularly how the river has shaped these communities.' Growing up in the 1990s, Clark saw the area changing and wanted to know more. When he was considering a career as a historian, he knew he wanted to focus on places such as Greenock, Newcastle, and Detroit. 'I wanted to know more about how these areas, and the people who live within them, had changed over the recent past,' he said. 'Politically, I was motivated by an anger at what had been inflicted on them by the movement of global capital and political choices framed by greed rather than care. 'I wanted to analyse how working-class people have fought – and continue to fight – against the harms afflicted from above.' READ MORE: See the full lists of acts who made political statements at Glastonbury 2025 Clark's book tells of disconnect between popular representations, memory and stories of successful resistance to closure by female workers. 'Broadly', he explains, received history is a 'story of male workers fighting against Thatcher and ultimately losing their industrial employment, ushering in the era of neoliberalism and industrial contraction. 'Rather, we see groups of women workers – with little to no trade union experience or a history of militancy – fighting back against the global movement of capital, and succeeding. This is a counter-narrative of deindustrialisation in Scotland which, while in no way invalidates the popular history, does illustrate the complexity of class struggle at the time. "The dominant historical narrative of deindustrialisation is masculine, figures such Arthur Scargill and Jimmy Reid leading miners and shipbuilders against the government and being involved in clashes with the police. 'This is often assumed, and reinforced by TV and film telling the story of male workers, while statues commemorating industry are also masculine. 'There's minimal space in this to consider women who worked in textile mills, clothing factories and light electronics, who also experienced the brutality of deindustrialisation and, in these three cases, fought a militant struggle in opposition. 'I tried in the book to recover these experiences, using oral history interviews to understand the motivations of the workers and how they now reflect on the importance of the action that they took. And the overarching theme that emerged was that the majority of the interviewees didn't recognise the importance of what they did in the broader history of Scotland in the last 40 years. 'If society largely forgets these actions, and there aren't memorials, TV shows, and reminders of their significance, even those involved slowly forget their own importance. 'My main argument in the book is that these three occupations – given their proximity, that they involved workers struggling against massive corporations, and that they were all successful – should be seen as one of the most important periods of Scotland's recent history.' So how can this precarious public memory be addressed, and what can these women's struggles in the early 1980s teach us today? Clark said: 'I'm clearly biased, as I spent 10 years researching and writing the book but these occupations should be known about, celebrated, and taught on. 'Some attempts have been made, and featured heavily in a Kirsty Wark-fronted documentary in 2021. But there's so much more that could and should be done. 'There should be memorials and monuments, there should be a docudrama that focuses only on these occupations and tells the stories of the workers, and they should be part of every university course on modern Scottish working-class history. 'Taken together, these steps can ensure the memory of these events are preserved and celebrated. I would welcome anyone with expertise in these fields reaching out to me to discuss how we can do this.' Since his book was published, Clark has continued to investigate deindustrialisation. 'I've become increasingly interested in how the deindustrialisation of the later 20th century impacts contemporary society, and the ways in which the long-term legacies continue to shape lived experience,' he tells me. READ MORE: Historic pub with ties to Robert Burns given new lease of life by community 'And I've done work across Britain attempting to understand how places affected are shaped by their recent pasts, particularly those 'forgotten communities' that have been left behind in the name of progress and then blamed for the ills of addiction, poverty, unemployment, and crime. 'I'm currently writing a number of articles that aim to demonstrate the link between the violence of industrial closure, political choices and the resulting label of 'multiple deprivation.' 'They centre on the narratives, memories, and experiences of those who live in these areas rather than looking from the outside and assigning labels and assumptions.'
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
'I've been told SNP will ban conversion practices in new parliament'
But the plans were shelved after John Swinney succeeded Mr Yousaf as First Minister. The Scottish Government confirmed in the Programme for Government that its proposals were being put on hold during the current parliamentary term, which ends in May next year, and that the administration will instead work with UK ministers on agreeing Westminster-led legislation that would include Scottish measures. A specific ban in Scotland was agreed between former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Greens as part of the Bute House Agreement which saw the smaller pro independence party brought into government for the first time in 2021. But when the deal collapsed, it was among the policies to be subsequently dropped. READ MORE: In an interview with The Herald Ms Roddick was asked if she was disappointed the Scottish Government won't bring in a ban on conversion practices in this parliament. "When the Programme for Government came forward, I was very clear in the chamber that this was a disappointment," she said. "I acted very much on the evidence that was presented when I was minister, as I sat down with people who have historically or recently been subjected to the kind of torment that the SNP is committed to banning. I know it [will] continue to happen until we bring this ban in." She added: "I have had reassurances that work continues and that the Scottish Government, failing an agreement with the UK Government, will bring a bill forward next session. So to me that is reassuring." The decision signalled another significant shift by the Scottish Government under Mr Swinney's leadership away from Ms Sturgeon's rights-focused policy agenda. But campaigners against conversion practices reacted furiously. 'This is the latest in a growing list of betrayals for LGBTQ+ Scots from this Scottish Government. Scotland could have banned conversion therapy years ago,' a spokesperson for End Conversion Therapy Scotland said at the time. 'LGBTQ+ rights are under attack right now, in a way we haven't seen since Thatcher's section 28 ban on 'promoting homosexuality'. Queer people are crying out for some solidarity from politicians. Instead, this news is a stab in the back.' During Ms Sturgeon's and Mr Yousaf's governments the SNP became embroiled in major internal rows over equalities policies. The SNP suffered its biggest backbench rebellion over Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRRB), designed to make the process easier for trans people to change their legal gender. Later former rural affairs secretary Fergus Ewing - who was among the SNP GRRB rebels - called for Mr Swinney to drop plans for a ban on conversion practices. Mr Ewing is now standing as an independent candidate against Ms Roddick in Inverness and Nairn at next year's Holyrood election. Polls suggest the SNP will remain the largest party at Holyrood after the election in May next year, with a reduced number of MSPs. Such the polling trend continues, it may mean the SNP will continue as a minority government. The Scottish Government was approached for comment.
