Germany may send its long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine but it will never be a game changer in the battle as Russia can counteract that weapon, a senior Russian diplomat said on Thursday.
Cited by state news agency TASS, Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the Russian delegation to negotiations on military security and arms control in Vienna said, “They have 600 such [Taurus] missiles, of which 150 are combat-ready, and the Germans themselves are afraid of supplying them, but, I think, they may well send some of them.”
He added, “Taurus missiles can be launched only from the F-16 fighter jet, and although Kyiv has remodified its Su-24 fighter jets to carry the missiles, they won’t be a solution.”
He emphasized, “We have ways of counteracting them, and we have been deploying more air defense systems.”
Ukraine has long claimed robust air defenses to protect against Russian air attacks and be able to return fire. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August emphasized that the defenses of Ukraine were not yet capable of defending its entire territory against Russian raids.
Concerning the Taurus, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had called on Berlin to deliver the long-range missiles as soon as possible. He said that with the Taurus missiles, Kyiv could “reach the Russian occupying forces on Ukrainian soil far beyond the front line, disrupt their logistics, and destroy command centers and ammunition depots.”
Boris Pistorius, German Defense Minister, had said in September that Berlin was not yet in a situation to determine whether or not to deliver Ukraine with Taurus missiles which have a range of more than 500 km and are launched by fighter jets.
