German Chancellor Friedrich Merz conceded on 3 November, after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that military deliveries to Ukraine have run into occasional resupply difficulties, according to a transcript the German government published. He will try to resolve them at a Coalition of the Willing summit in Berlin on 19 November, where leaders will agree on the scope of further, mostly military, aid for 2027, he said.
Those snags land on a country already short of air defense. Russia launched another massive cruise and ballistic missile attack that day, Zelenskyy said. In April, Ukraine’s Air Force confirmed that Patriot crews were rationing missiles mid-attack. From late November to mid-December 2025, Ukraine’s F-16 fleet had only a handful of US-made AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, three sources told Reuters.
Merz: deliveries help, despite occasional resupply difficulties
Merz said Germany wants to provide more winter aid and energy support this year. He said he gathered from his talks with Zelenskyy that many shipments are helping Ukraine’s army a lot right now, despite all the weaknesses in its air defense. He named ammunition for F-16 fighter jets in particular, but also air defense and other munitions.
Germany co-hosts the summit with France and the UK, which lead the coalition of over 30 countries coordinating aid to Ukraine, Radio Svoboda noted. Merz also urged all partners to meet NATO allies’ €70 billion (about $80 billion) military aid commitment for 2026.
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Zelenskyy: a big shortage in air defense
Zelenskyy said the leaders discussed Ukraine’s big air-defense shortage and supplies of PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors for US-made Patriots and German IRIS-T missiles. They also discussed a new support package for Ukraine’s F-16s, which Ukraine needs, among other things, against Russia’s Shahed attack drones, he said.
The next day, Zelenskyy met German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. Ukraine has a two-year contract for German-made PAC-2 missiles, and “we are working to accelerate deliveries,” he wrote on X. The two agreed their teams would explore this and other issues, including IRIS-T and F-16 munitions.
None of that closes the Patriot gap quickly. Only a handful of countries can build ballistic-missile interceptors, and all of them are short, defense scholar Marc DeVore told Euromaidan Press in June. Zelenskyy said work is under way on Freya, an anti-ballistic program, but DeVore said he would not bet on it being produced by this winter.
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