The debate over the supply of heavy weapons to Germany continues to divide the German political world. Following the sharp criticism of the German Chancellor for his indecision and hesitation, Olaf Solz tried to give answers in a short speech yesterday during the G7 presidency.
Following the recent announcement of € 2 billion in financial assistance to Ukraine, the chancellor said that while the German army has no room to supply more weapons to Ukraine, its government is still supporting Ukraine financially to buy weapons from the German armaments industry. . “We asked the German armaments industry to let us know what weapons it could have in the near future,” he said.
In the morning, however, Foreign Minister Analena Berbok from Riga, Latvia, where she is visiting, provided support to Chancellor Solz, saying that according to the information available to the German army can not offer further armaments, something that can but let the German armaments industry do. “The delivery of armored vehicles is not taboo,” he said, adding that there is currently no equipment in Germany that can be delivered to Ukraine in the short term.
Xofreiter: Danger of “de facto World War III”
In an interview with ZDF’s Morgenmagazin show, the head of the Greens’ European Parliamentary Affairs Committee, Anton Hofreiter, who recently traveled to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, said: “The risk of this war lasting forever,” he said, referring to a possible slip into a “de facto Third World War.”
For their part, the Christian Democrats warn that if Chancellor Soltz does not take immediate action in favor of the delivery of further weapons to Ukraine, then it is possible that next week they will submit a resolution to the German Parliament demanding the surrender of heavy weapons. In this way, “we want to support the government in this crisis,” wrote in a twitter post the head of the K.O. of the Christian Democrats Johan Vandepul, noting, however, that Solz is partly responsible for the fact that Ukraine has been left defenseless.
Disappointment, bitterness and specific requests from Melnik
And all this at a time when the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnik, continues to express in every way, as he says, “disappointment and bitterness” towards the German government and personally towards Chancellor Soltz. “The position that the German army is no longer able to deliver anything to Ukraine is incomprehensible,” he told ZDF.
However, according to the tagesschau.de website, the German army has 400 Marder tanks, 100 of which are used only for training purposes and which could be sent to Ukraine. About 800 obsolete Fuchs-type armor could also be made available to the Ukrainian army. Finally, the Ukrainian ambassador considers that the delivery of PzH 2000 self-propelled guns (Panzerhaubitze 2000) would be a significant help, adding that the German army has 120 long-range guns of this type.
DW – Dimitra Kyranoudi, Berlin
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