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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj: "Our job is to build a professional, powerful fleet"
Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / dpa
With the Russian annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, Ukraine lost Sevastopol, the most important port in its fleet, in 2014.
Now the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj apparently wants to go on the offensive.
"We are preparing to break the blockade in the Black Sea region," he said with a view to Russia in an interview with several Ukrainian media.
To this end, Selenskyj plans to massively upgrade its own Black Sea fleet by 2035.
"Our job is to build a professional, powerful fleet capable of turning anyone down," he said.
The head of state announced corvettes, speedboats and submarines.
Government troops have been fighting against Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014.
According to UN estimates, more than 13,000 people have been killed since then.
The Ukrainian shipbuilding industry has been on the ground for years due to a lack of orders.
It was only in June that a court declared a traditional shipyard in Mykolaiv bankrupt.
Cruisers and aircraft carriers were still built there in Soviet times.
Kiev is currently buying decommissioned naval ships from the USA and Great Britain.
Ukrainian warships are also to be built in Turkey, according to an announcement made in July.
Kiev had also asked Germany for warships and arms deliveries.
Ukraine needs missile speedboats, patrol boats, assault rifles, radio equipment and armored military vehicles, Zelenskyi said.
After a visit to Ukraine, the co-chairman of the Greens, Robert Habeck, spoke out in favor of the delivery of defensive weapons to the country - and thus opposed the party line.
The federal government rejected the request.
Zelenskyi, elected in 2019, can rule until 2029 if re-elected in 2024.
Most recently he had shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies and replaced the Ukrainian military leadership.
mfh / dpa