Chancellor Olaf scholz (SPD) and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte see for now no possibility of supplying the Ukraine with more than the promised twelve self-propelled howitzers 2000. “I don’t see that at the moment,” said Rutte on Thursday in The Hague in a joint press conference with Scholz. He pointed out that weapon systems “cannot be easily made available”.
The number twelve is not accidental. It has something to do with “the fact that we considered when does it make sense, how much does it have to be in order to create a functioning unit from it,” explained Scholz. “And then we both got together and made a little bit more possible than otherwise would have been possible.”
Rutte explained that the howitzers were not a weapon aid intended for immediate use, “but rather for a subsequent phase of the fighting”. A good training of the Ukrainian soldiers with these “complex guns” is crucial. The Netherlands also have a lot of backlogs in their army that they have to clear up first.
The Netherlands deliver five self-propelled howitzers, Germany seven.