Germany will support Ukraine with another military aid package worth €1.3bn (£1.1bn) that will include an additional IRIS-T air defence unit, the country’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has said in Kyiv, Reuters reports.

The German government has pitched itself to be the “backbone” of European defence since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and pledged to support Kyiv while also bringing its military spending up to the Nato target of 2% of GDP.

Berlin is the second-biggest supplier of military assistance to Kyiv after the US. The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, pledged last month that Germany would maintain its aid to Kyiv, insisting that “we will support Ukraine as long as necessary”.

/The Guardian