Signal No. 141 · Stock now, contracts later

At the 36th meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, held by video on Tuesday and co-chaired by Wes Streeting at his first meeting in the chair, Boris Pistorius said: "I've decided to deliver urgently needed PAC-2 interceptor missiles from Bundeswehr stocks to Ukraine", and added: "I appeal to all members of the UDCG to look into their own stocks and make similar deliveries." The ministry's own note gives no quantity and no date. Germany will also send more AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missiles from stock, "being delivered as we speak", continue IRIS-T deliveries, with Ukraine to order several thousand more under the EU loan, and finance several tens of thousands of rounds of long-range artillery ammunition that Britain procures and delivers.

Yevhen Khmara, at his first Contact Group as defence minister, said Ukraine "is signing contracts for approximately 1,000 missiles for Patriot systems" with partners and through the EU loan, and that "most of these missiles will only begin to be delivered over the coming years. That is why we ask that you supply us with the missiles from your stocks today in exchange for future improved missiles from our contracts." He put the immediate ask at 300 Patriot interceptors from existing stocks, 500 air-to-air missiles and man-portable systems, and the year's defence financing gap at EUR 23 billion. Britain announced GBP 100 million through NATO's Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List for Patriot missiles, air-defence equipment, large-calibre artillery rounds and drones before winter. Ursula von der Leyen wrote that "the next disbursement of 3.2 billion euros will enable Ukraine to better protect its skies"; the Commission's formal approval, for PAC-3 rounds that need a derogation from the loan's 65 per cent European-content rule, is set for 11 September.

Mark Rutte said "delays simply cost human lives" and that civilian casualties are the highest since May 2022; Elbridge Colby, for the United States, said "we must be prepared for a protracted conflict" and that the US enables allies to buy interceptors for Ukraine through the Jumpstart programme. Zelenskyy called the German decision one of "exactly the kinds of decisions that bring peace closer".

The request is three months old and the pledge two. On 4 June, as No. 75 carried, Bloomberg reported Kyiv asking Berlin for dozens of interceptors from Bundeswehr stock this year, to be repaid in kind from production already scheduled. At Ankara on 8 July Pistorius pledged a further handover of interceptors from Bundeswehr stock, as No. 99 recorded, and the ministry's Tuesday note describes the PAC-2 transfer as the one "already announced at the NATO summit in Ankara"; the July pledge carried no number either. On 24 August, as No. 130 recorded, Zelenskyy gave the year's projected Patriot deliveries as 264 rounds, asked for at least 300 before winter, and described an agreement with Chancellor Merz for 600 PAC-2 rounds over 2027–28 that Berlin has not confirmed; at Wicklow a week ago Greece and Spain declined to release expiring rounds, on one Dutch minister's account, as No. 136 carried.

The air force's morning report lists Oniks anti-ship missiles launched from Bryansk and Kursk regions and Crimea, Iskander-M, KN-23 and S-400 ballistic rounds from the north, 32 Kh-101 cruise missiles from Vologda region, and 166 Shahed-type strike drones with Parody decoys among them; by 08:30 it counted 175 targets downed or suppressed, two of them ballistic, 31 cruise missiles and 142 drones. It gave no total for the ballistic and anti-ship rounds fired. By the afternoon Klitschko put the city's dead at five, two of them in an evening strike on warehouses in Solomianskyi district, and 23 injured, with damage in six districts over close to five hours of explosions. Zelenskyy: "a difficult attack, which the Russians deliberately tried to calculate to cause as much harm to life as possible: ballistic missiles, cruise and anti-ship missiles, jet-powered Shaheds." Sybiha: "His ballistic missiles speak louder than his words on diplomacy." Russian officials reported three killed and 13 wounded from Ukrainian drones, in Saratov, Kursk and Bryansk regions.

Ukraine's reading of the capitals-only pause ran through Monday, as No. 140 noted; Peskov's wording on Saturday, three days from that midnight, would run to Wednesday. The strike fell after the first and inside the second, by the two sides' own words.

On Tuesday morning Cologne police stopped the 48-year-old from Gevelsberg in the surroundings of the Weisweiler power plant, the site where new launch devices had been found on Monday afternoon and where, the police said in the morning, a further confession letter had been lying by one of the devices. He carried "further explosive devices"; in the undergrowth nearby officers found "a tent, fitted with further explosive charges". The arrest warrant is the Cottbus prosecutor's, for the Turnow-Preilack case, on suspicion of causing an explosion and disrupting public utilities. Herbert Reul: "He was still on the move and wanted to carry on. This game was ended today", and: "At the moment everything points to a lone perpetrator and to everything having come from his hand." Alexander Dobrindt, on the confession letters: "The knowledge revealed in these letters is clear perpetrator knowledge."

The police have not said whether Monday's Weisweiler devices fired, and no forensic match between the man and the Bergheim or Saxony devices has been announced. The federal prosecutor general, examining a takeover since Thursday, had announced none by publication.

Yuri Ushakov said the presidents spoke for one hour, "constructive and quite frank", and that Trump said an early end to the war would open "impressive and far-reaching" prospects for restoring relations; Putin gave his reading of the front and, in Ushakov's words, "in view of the speculation about Russia's alleged hostile intentions toward European countries, it was underlined that we don't have any aggressive plans regarding Europe", and that talk of a Russian threat was a pretext for European support to Ukraine and European spending. The Kremlin's readout does not mention a trilateral meeting. There was no White House readout by publication, and no confirmation of the call to Zelenskyy that was to follow. Zelenskyy told reporters he aims to meet Trump around 20 September at the UN General Assembly. The Putin call a US official had placed on Monday, as No. 140 recorded, took place on Tuesday, after the Kyiv strike.

Across the Spanish sites the votes tallied on Tuesday came to 51.2 per cent for keeping the indefinite strike and 48.8 per cent for pausing it, a difference of 67 ballots; Getafe, with about 9,000 of the 14,500 staff and the A330 MRTT conversion line, had held it on Monday by 22 of 2,779 votes cast online, 46.2 to 45.4 per cent with 8.4 per cent abstaining on Infodefensa's count, and San Pablo by 76 per cent, while Cádiz, Illescas, Tablada and Albacete voted to pause. The strike committee decided to stand down the pickets at the gates from Wednesday while keeping the assemblies, and expects the binding referendum on the ministry text, real CPI plus 7.95 points to 2029 and a EUR 2,000 payment in October, on Wednesday or Thursday. Tuesday's meeting with the company produced, in ÚTIL's Marc Vidal's words, no movement from Friday's proposal; CGT is preparing a constitutional complaint over its exclusion from the ministry table; the Madrid march on 12 September stands.