Ukraine and Germany have signed a sweeping strategic defence partnership centred on drone technology, marking a significant deepening of bilateral ties. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced the agreement on Tuesday in Berlin, at the first formal German-Ukrainian government consultations held in roughly 20 years. The deal grants Germany access to Ukraine's advanced drone expertise — refined under combat conditions during more than three years of war against Russia — in exchange for expanded German military support.
The partnership covers joint production of medium- and long-range drones, cooperation on missiles and software, the exchange of digital combat data for the development of new weapons systems, and strengthened air defence. Berlin confirmed it had funded contracts for several hundred Patriot air-defence missiles, while additional IRIS-T launcher systems are also included in the package. Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov valued the overall support at four billion euros (approximately $4.7 billion), describing it as "a massive boost for our air defence." Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine has the production capacity to double its current military output but lacks the necessary funding: "We simply don't have enough money," he said. Merz framed the arrangement as mutually beneficial, arguing that no European army has been as battle-tested in recent decades as Ukraine's.
The Berlin summit took place amid fresh Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities. A missile strike on Dnipro, a major industrial city in central-eastern Ukraine, killed at least four to five people and wounded more than 20, with regional authorities reporting serious shrapnel injuries. A separate drone strike on the southern city of Kherson killed a 52-year-old woman. The attacks underscored the urgency behind Kyiv's push for greater air defence capacity.
The agreement also comes at a diplomatically significant moment. Both leaders expressed relief at the electoral defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose government had blocked a 90-billion-euro EU loan facility for Ukraine. With his successor, Péter Magyar, expected to reverse that position, Merz pressed for a quick release of the funds, with discussions anticipated at an informal EU summit in Cyprus within weeks. Merz also reaffirmed that there could be no post-war settlement reached between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine without European participation.
The drone cooperation dimension carries broader implications for Europe's defence industry. Ukraine's experience building battlefield technology at speed — one of its leading drone and missile manufacturers, Fire Point, now produces around 200 drones and three cruise missiles per day — has highlighted a gap between Ukrainian industrial agility and European regulatory pace. While Germany and Denmark have moved to integrate Ukrainian expertise relatively quickly, some European countries face criticism that cumbersome permitting processes are slowing defence co-production efforts. Ukrainian officials have warned that battlefield innovations have a lifespan of only three to six months before adversaries develop countermeasures, making speed of development as strategically important as firepower itself.