Kiev, 24 August 2022 (dpa/MIA) - Germany is preparing to ship more than €500 million ($499.3 million) in additional weapons to help Ukraine fend off the ongoing Russian invasion, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday. Berlin's weapons pledge came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hosted an online summit of dozens of world leaders to rally support for the return of the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. As Russia's assault on the rest of Ukraine enters its sixth month, the leaders vowed to stick by Ukraine for as long as it takes, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledging the conflict had become "a grinding war of attrition." "This is a battle of wills and a battle of logistics. Therefore, we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long-term, so that Ukraine prevails, as a sovereign independent nation," he said. The German chancellor said Kiev is to receive three more IRIS-T air defence systems, a dozen armoured recovery vehicles and 20 pickup-mounted missile launchers. While most of are to be delivered in 2023, Scholz said some will arrive "significantly earlier." "The international community will never accept Russia's illegal, imperialist annexation of Ukrainian territory," Scholz said to attendees at the summit, named the Crimea Platform. While Germany wrestled with the question of whether it should supply lethal weapons to Ukraine early in the year, Berlin's deliveries of howitzers and other heavy weapons has since accelerated. The Crimea Platform is Ukraine's second effort to mobilize international support for taking back the Black Sea peninsula from Russia. "A place of paradise was turned into a depressive and dependent region - into a region of high fences, barbed wire and lawlessness," Zelensky told the videoconference. To Ukrainians, Crimea was not just a piece of territory, but "part of our people, part of our society," he said. Polish President Andrzej Duda, who travelled to meet Zelensky in person, said at the forum: "Crimea was and is as much a part of Ukraine as Gdansk or Lublin is a part of Poland, as Nice is a part of France, Cologne is a part of Germany and Rotterdam is a part of the Netherlands." He also called for the elimination of the Baltic Sea gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, Nord Stream 2, according to Polish news agency PAP. Poland and other eastern EU countries long criticized the Russian-German project as giving the Kremlin leverage over Europe and putting the continent's energy security at risk. The German government refused to put the completed pipeline into operation in February as the Russian attack loomed. However, there are still advocates for Nord Stream 2 in Berlin. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose country has good relations with Russia, also said Crimea clearly belonged to Ukraine. Boris Johnson, who is in his final days as British prime minister, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin "is planning to do to other parts of Ukraine - indeed all of Ukraine - what he has done to Crimea." "He is preparing more annexations and more sham referendums," Johnson told his counterparts, according to Britain's Press Association.