You're reading: Deutsche Welle: German military relying on Russia, Ukraine firms to transport tanks

Germany will be forced to continue handing lucrative contracts to Russian and Ukrainian firms to transport its military hardware, according to Bundestag MPs. A joint contract with the Russian firm Volga Dnepr and the Ukrainian firm Antonov Design Bureau is due to run out at the end of the year, and will have to be renewed because Germany does not have its own large-scale military transport planes.

But the contract, leaked to public broadcaster ARD, will also have to be split in two because Ukraine is now engaged in a war with pro-Russian separatists in its eastern region. Since 2004, the two companies had been working together under the name “Strategic Airlift Interim Solution” (SALIS) to supply logistics to a number of NATO countries through the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA).

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