Chancellor Olaf Scholz is coming under growing pressure to drop his resistance to sending German-made cruise missiles to Ukraine after the US allowed Kyiv limited use of its weapons for strikes inside Russia.
US President Joe Biden has authorised Ukraine to launch limited strikes into Russia’s Kursk region using US-made Atacms long-range missiles, a major policy shift before Donald Trump takes office in January.
Scholz has long opposed sending Germany’s long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, over fears it could lead to an escalation of the conflict. A spokesperson for the chancellor reiterated his position on Monday.
But calls for Scholz to change his policy are growing. Economy minister and Green candidate for chancellor Robert Habeck said on Sunday that he would send Tauruses if he prevailed in the country’s snap elections in February.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a senior MEP, noted that the Greens, opposition Christian Democratic Union party and her party, the liberal FDP, were all in favour of supplying Tauruses to Ukraine.
She told German radio that there was now a “numerical majority in the Bundestag [for this]”.
FDP officials said their parliamentary group was debating whether to table a motion in the Bundestag demanding that Germany start sending Tauruses.
Johann Wadephul, defence spokesman for the CDU, criticised Scholz on Monday, saying Ukraine’s fortunes would only change if it could attack military targets deep into Russian territory.
“But while Biden has set the right course, the chancellor has dug himself in . . . regardless of the consequences and with no parliamentary majority,” he told the Financial Times.
German-made Tauruses would significantly bolster Ukraine’s ability to inflict damage on Russia, analysts said. The weapons have an intelligent warhead system that can ensure maximum damage to structures such as bridges and bunkers, and have a range in excess of 500km.
Scholz’s intransigence on Tauruses contrasts with the positions of the UK and France, which have both been urging Biden to back them in authorising Ukraine to use their Storm Shadows and Scalps to hit targets in Russia.
However, Biden had until now declined to support Kyiv’s use of the British- and French-made weapons for fear of triggering further escalation of the conflict. London and Paris had been reluctant to move without US backing.
The increased pressure on Scholz comes at a delicate time for the chancellor after he pulled the plug on his coalition and now leads a minority government.
He was criticised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for holding an hour-long phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday, his first in nearly two years.
Zelenskyy accused him of “opening Pandora’s box”.
EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell said he hoped other EU member states would follow the US decision to allow Ukraine to strike targets in Russia.
French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France had been willing to lift restrictions for Ukraine for the past six months.
“We openly said that this was an option that we would consider if it was to allow to strike targets from where Russians are currently aggressing Ukrainian territory,” Barrot said.
Asked whether France would follow the US in approving the use of its long-range weapons, a western official briefed on Paris’ stance said on Monday: “Yes, same for us as I understand. We’ve been ready for a while.”
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Ukraine is in desperate need of new weaponry as its frontline crumbles. But the overall impact of any deployment of long-range missiles depends on whether the US will expand the area in which they can be used, say experts.
If limited to Russia’s Kursk region, the weapons would not significantly change the dynamics of the war, said military expert Mykola Bielieskov.
“The frontline needs to be stabilised fully, which requires Atacms strikes along the whole” of its length, said Bielieskov.
Biden’s decision comes almost two years after Ukraine first requested to be allowed to use western-supplied missiles to strike Russian territory. US-led decision-making on weapons supply to Kyiv has been cautious and marked by delays.
The protracted and highly publicised discussion over long-range weapons has given Moscow an opportunity to relocate many of its airfields and bases out of Atacms range.
“I don’t see the Atacms as a game-changer at this stage,” said Nick Reynolds from the Royal United Services Institute.
The Kremlin has said the US decision to let Ukraine launch limited strikes inside Russia with Atacms marks a “new turn of escalation” in the nearly three-year conflict, and said Moscow would react “appropriately”.
Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s spokesperson, said outgoing Biden’s administration was trying “to keep pouring fuel on the fire and provoke an escalation of tensions”, according to Interfax.
Peskov did not say what Russia would do in response but recalled earlier comments by Putin equating such a move to a direct war between Moscow and the west.
“If this decision has been taken, it means nothing other than the direct involvement of Nato countries, the US and European countries, in the war in Ukraine,” Peskov said.
Additional reporting by Raphael Minder in Warsaw
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