The Diplomat
Acting Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, participated yesterday in the fifteenth meeting of the Contact Group for the Defense of Ukraine, where she held a first meeting with her new Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, and announced the dispatch of command boats, armored vehicles and missiles to Ukraine.
The meeting, convened by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, brought together representatives of 54 Ukrainian partner countries, NATO and EU member states at the German Ramstein Air Base. According to the Ministry of Defense in a press release, the first working session analyzed the current situation on the ground and provided information that can help member countries to address more effectively the real and most urgent needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and to plan future aid deliveries more efficiently.
In her speech, Robles expressed her welcome and full support to the newly appointed Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Rustem Umerov, who attended this meeting for the first time. Robles also recalled the excellent level of cooperation achieved with her predecessor, Minister Oleksi Reznikov. Subsequently, the acting minister held a working meeting with Umerov, to whom she conveyed “all the solidarity of Spain”, as reported by the Ministry through its official account on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
Rustem Umerov, a 41-year-old Muslim Tatar from the Russian-occupied Crimea, took office on September 6 by decision of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who three days earlier had dismissed Reznikov in the midst of a government offensive against corruption, although the president officially justified the dismissal by the need to introduce in the Ministry “new approaches and other formats of interaction both with the military and with society in general”.
New deliveries
The Minister also updated her colleagues on the status of deliveries of material with which Spain continues to support Ukraine and announced the shipment of new armored personnel carriers, pneumatic command boats, as well as different material, launchers and anti-aircraft and surface defense missiles, special trucks for the handling of these systems and ambulances.
The exact amount of military material supplied by Spain to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion is not yet known. The shipments, details of which are not provided by the Government for security reasons, are carried out through the Polish border or by sea. In any case, the shipment of a dozen Leopard battle tanks and TOA armored personnel carriers, in addition to ammunition, fuel or extreme cold uniforms with which the Ukrainian troops have spent the winter, is recorded.
On the other hand, and in order to keep the Role 2+ deployable hospital transferred in August, which is providing a very important service, the minister announced yesterday the shipment last Sunday of a significant quantity of pallets with surgical and sanitary material.
She also highlighted the good progress of the training of Ukrainian personnel on Spanish territory within the framework of the EUMAM Ukraine mission, under the coordination of the Toledo Training Coordination Center. The forecasts indicate that nearly 4,000 troops will finally receive training, which doubles the amount initially committed by Spain. Also in terms of training, and as a response to the new Ukrainian needs, a military parachuting course will be offered in wind tunnel, as well as different specific courses for the Ukrainian military security forces.
Finally, the Minister emphasized the contribution of the Spanish military hospitals in the medical treatment of Ukrainian fighters, where so far 77 seriously wounded and amputee soldiers have already received the required care and the necessary prostheses.
In the margins of the meeting, Margarita Robles attended the first meeting of the coalition for support to Ukraine in Information and Communication Technologies, during which she informed about the Spanish commitment with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense in the field of Cyber Defense by offering materials and training.
