April 7, 2022: Lavrov rejects a

On Monday, he said that “there are no longer any range restrictions for weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine — neither by the British, nor by the French, nor by us, and not by the Americans either.”“That means Ukraine can also defend itself by, for example, attacking military positions in Russia,” Merz said at a forum organized by WDR public television. “Until a while ago, it couldn’t. … It can now.”

“We call this ‘long-range fire’ in jargon, also supplying Ukraine with weapons that attack military targets in the hinterland,” he added.He didn’t elaborate, and it wasn’t clear whether he was referring to theon longer-range weapons late last year.

Commenting on Merz’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a decision to lift range restrictions would be “quite dangerous” and “run contrary to our efforts to reach a political settlement.”Germany has been the second-biggest supplier of

to Ukraine after the United States.

Merz’s government has been tightlipped on whether it will supply Taurus long-range cruise missiles, something his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, refused to do and Merz advocated for as opposition leader. The government has said it will no longer provide full details of the weapons it is supplying to Ukraine, unlike Scholz’s administration, citing the need for “strategic ambiguity.”and the Air National Guard headquarters and augment the Space Force without creating a separate Space Force National Guard — something the service has said would not be efficient because it would be so small.

“We are actively pursuing where do we want our part-time workforce? What type of work do they do?” the head ofGen. Chance Saltzman, said Thursday at a POLITICO conference.

The Space Force was established by President Donald Trump in late 2019, during his first term. In the years since, the Air Force has transferred its space missions into the now five-year-old military branch — except for the 578 positions still contained in the Air National Guard, which is part of the Air Force. In the 2025 defense bill, Congress mandated that those positions move over to the Space Force as well.The transferred service members would be a part-time force like they are now, just serving under the Space Force instead of their state units.