Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed as “trash talk” claims that Germany is not providing enough military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
In a lively Bundestag debate on Wednesday – and parliamentary backing for a new €100 billion armed forces spending plan – Mr Scholz said Berlin would provide Ukraine with a dozen anti-tank weapons and a modern anti-aircraft system. The latter, he said, would allow Ukraine defend one of its major cities from Russian air attacks.
In nearly 100 days of conflict the chancellor said Germany had already delivered anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, 15 million rounds of ammunition, 100,000 hand grenades, more than 5,000 anti-tank mines, “extensive” amounts of explosives, anti-drone defence systems, communications equipment food, medical equipment. In addition Berlin had organised swaps of older German tanks for Ukraine via the Czech Republic and Greece and taken in 168 seriously injured Ukrainian soldiers.
“It’s great to be one of those who say ‘more of everything’, just as it is easy to say ‘nothing at all’,” said Mr Scholz in a fiery address. “But what you really have to do is exactly the path this government has taken: show great determination, courage and wise judgment.”
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Three months ago Mr Scholz held what he called a “watershed” speech, shattering a taboo to provide weapons to Ukraine. In addition he announced a €100 billion off-balance-sheet fund to rebuild Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces after years of neglect and cutbacks.
After criticism from the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU), Mr Scholz insisted his government was merely correcting the “failings of the last 16 years of CDU/CSU defence ministers and its government head”.
“What we are managing here is a quantum leap that will make the Bundeswehr the largest conventional army in the European Nato system,” he said.
Germany’s air force will get €40 billion for new F-35 fighter aircraft and helicopters; with €19.3 billion the navy can buy new frigates and submarines; in addition €16.6 billion will allow the army invest in new tanks and communications equipment.
The plan reverses a decline in the armed forces in the post-Cold War era, which had seen spending drop to around about half the Nato minimum of 2 per cent of gross domestic product.
Germany’s coalition partners talked up the deal on Wednesday, with Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock calling it a chance to show that “Nato can depend on us”.
More critical defence experts said that, even with extra money available, it remained to be seen if Bundeswehr procurement systems – seen as overly complex – would even be able to order this much new equipment.
Green defence expert Omid Nouripour warned of a “Bermuda triangle between between the arms industry, Bundeswehr users and the procurement office – where what is needed most urgently is often not the priority”.
Another unresolved challenge, following the end of conscription in 2011 after 55 years, is a slump in serving numbers with widespread vacancies across the Bundeswehr.
In the Bundestag CDU leader Friedrich Merz accused Mr Scholz and his government of letting down Ukraine and its Nato partners by procrastinating on defence promises.
He quoted from the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily, which accused the chancellor of “ruining Germany’s reputation” by using “reflection and caution as a front for procrastination”.
“You telephone for 80 minutes with the Russian president ... but if the Ukrainian speaker of the parliament, Ukraine’s second-highest representative, is in Berlin tomorrow, why don’t you give them an appointment?,” asked Mr Merz. “What is wrong with this government?”
After an early surge, support for delivering heavy weapons to Ukraine has dropped five points to 46 per cent in Germany. Some 57 per cent, according to a recent poll, fear that supplying weapons could see the Ukraine-Russia war spread across Europe.
