Berlin When Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) visits the military training area in Putlos in Schleswig-Holstein this Thursday, the visit should also send a signal: Germany is making good on its promise to support Ukraine militarily against the Russian aggressor – and it has to do so nor hide behind other nations.
Instructors from the armaments company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) train Ukrainian soldiers on the Gepard anti-aircraft tank at the training ground on the Baltic Sea. 15 examples of the almost 50-tonne device from industrial stocks have now been handed over to the Ukraine, and 15 more are to follow.
After initially some sharp criticism from the ranks of the government factions, the tone in the debate about German weapons for Ukraine has calmed down. Scholz only promised further deliveries worth well over 500 million euros on Tuesday.
According to a government spokesman, the package includes three additional Iris-T missile defense systems, 20 pick-up-mounted missile launchers, anti-drone devices, a dozen armored recovery vehicles and precision artillery ammunition. The weapons should be delivered “essentially in 2023”, “some much earlier,” said the spokesman.
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), which compares humanitarian, military and financial support from various nations to Ukraine in its “Ukraine Support Tracker” database, ranks Germany in third place behind the USA and Great Britain in terms of military aid. Support services that have become known up to August 3 are recorded.
US gives Kyiv money to strengthen Ukraine’s defense capability in the long term
But the United States continues to submit. President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday – exactly six months after the start of the war – that he would support Kyiv with the equivalent of another three billion euros. “This will allow Ukraine to acquire air defense systems, artillery systems and ammunition, unmanned air defense systems and radars in order to be able to defend itself in the long term.”
The US President has pledged more billions in aid to Ukraine.
(Photo: AP)
While the focus of American support has so far been on delivering arms and ammunition to the front in Ukraine as quickly as possible, the US President is now focusing on strengthening the Ukrainian military in the long term.
This calculation is also followed by the approval of the federal government, which became known at the end of July, which allows the Ukraine to order 100 self-propelled howitzers 2000 directly from the manufacturers KMW and Rheinmetall. The first of the devices are unlikely to be delivered before 2024. Here, too, it is a question of securing Ukraine’s defense capability in the long term.
This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the half-year anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine:
However, the opposition in the Bundestag is not satisfied with looking into the distant future as long as the danger persists that Russia will win its war of aggression. “Unfortunately, it remains the same: too little, too late,” tweeted Union parliamentary group leader Johann Wadephul (CDU) with a view of Scholz’s new delivery commitments.
Why will a large part of the device only be delivered in the coming year? Wadephul asks why Germany is still not supplying any Marder armored personnel carriers, which industry is stockpiling, or any more 2000 self-propelled howitzers.
Kyiv wants more support from Germany
On the occasion of Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24, the Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov once again increased the pressure on Berlin: He called on the federal government to approve the delivery of Leopard main battle tanks from other countries.
>> Read here: 1.7 billion euros for howitzers and tens of thousands of shots – Ukraine buys big from Germany
“That’s why we ask the Germans: give us the tools and we’ll do the job,” said Resnikov on Wednesday in the ARD “Tagsthemen”. Ukraine would also like to have more “real weapons”, such as Mars multiple rocket launchers, three of which Germany has supplied so far. If you had twelve, it would be “even better,” said the minister.
The Union faction in the Bundestag has now requested a special session of the Defense Committee for the coming week. At the meeting during the parliamentary summer break, the issue of arms deliveries to Ukraine will be discussed in addition to the Bundeswehr mission in Mali, which is about to end.
The chair of the committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, has already rejected the request. The representatives of the Defense Committee are informed regularly, and a special meeting has already been scheduled for September 7th. “We dealt intensively with the situation in Ukraine and the situation in Mali. The traffic light factions have informed me that they will therefore not comply with the opposition’s request.”
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