German Chancellor Friedrich Merz crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border on foot at dawn, pushing a two-wheeled handcart loaded with drone engines, and announced he would not stop walking until he had personally handed every component to President Volodymyr Zelensky at a tram stop in central Kyiv.
The Chancellor left Berlin eleven days ago, accompanied by Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and a delegation of defense executives from Siemens Energy, Hensoldt, Diehl Defence and Quantum Systems, all of whom are required to carry at least one rotor each and to sleep in the same roadside tents as the Chancellor. «We have abolished the concept of the armored motorcade,» Merz told reporters somewhere near Lviv. «If Ukraine needs our support in the coming weeks, it will receive it at walking pace, with our own hands, and it will receive it in the order it was loaded.»
The route was chosen so that the delegation passes through every village that has hosted a German-funded generator repair, and at each stop Merz is obliged to personally test a generator by running it for one hour while the defense executives stand in a row and salute the current. Local mayors have begun erecting wooden arches over the road, and the village of Hnidyn has scheduled a drone-assembly competition in which the Chancellor must attach four propellers to a frame before the church bell finishes ringing.
Kyiv authorities have closed the tram line along Khreshchatyk for the arrival, where a joint German-Ukrainian drone workshop is to be built directly on the platform, with the first shift beginning the moment Merz sets down the cart. Officials say the Chancellor will personally sweep the floor of the workshop before handing over the one-billion-euro military package in coins, which he has carried in a separate rucksack since the Polish border.