Madrid, November 18 (NA) – The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Tuesday a “new package of military support” for Ukraine worth 615 million euros (710 million dollars) from “next month” to support the Kyiv army against the Russian invasion.
“I have shared with President (Volodymyr) Zelensky that over the next month, Spain will mobilize a new package of military support for Ukraine for an amount of 615 million euros,” Sánchez stated at a press conference with the Ukrainian leader in Madrid, as cited by RFI.
“This package will first include the shipment of new defensive equipment worth approximately 300 million euros,” as part of the bilateral security agreement for 1 billion euros per year signed in 2024 between the two countries, Sánchez noted.
The press conference took place after a ceremony for the signing of bilateral documents, which included one aimed at combating “Russian disinformation,” the Argentine News Agency reported.
Sánchez reiterated the full and firm support of the Spanish Government against the “neo-imperialism of (Vladimir) Putin,” the Russian president who ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, the war has caused tens of thousands of deaths, among civilians and military personnel, as well as millions of displaced Ukrainians.
“Your struggle is our struggle,” Sánchez emphasized alongside Zelensky, who visited Madrid on Tuesday after being in Paris on Monday.
The Ukrainian leader is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Wednesday to try to reactivate, once again, the negotiations aimed at ending the war, in a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the US envoy Steve Witkoff.
Before the meeting at the Moncloa Palace, the residence of the President of the Spanish Government, Zelensky and Sánchez visited the Reina Sofía art museum, in the center of Madrid, to see the “Guernica,” the famous work by Pablo Picasso.
The painting is a “universal symbol of barbarism, of war. A hymn to peace,” Sánchez said, adding to Zelensky that “sooner rather than later our two countries will share the privilege of peace, economic development, prosperity, and the European project.”
At the beginning of the Russian invasion, Zelensky compared it to the bombing of Guernica, a small city in the Spanish Basque Country bombed in 1937 by the Nazi aviation in support of the troops of Francisco Franco during the Civil War.
