Pushing back against domestic pressure, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz openly spoke out on Monday (26 February) against the delivery of Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, citing the risk of Germany becoming involved in the war.
“It is a very far-reaching weapon – and what the British and French are doing in terms of target control and accompanying target control cannot be done in Germany,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin.
“[Germany] must not be linked at any point or in any place to the goals that this [weapon] system achieves,” Scholz said.
Thus, the delivery of the weapons system was not “the next option on the agenda”, he added.
His comments come after pressure inside Berlin’s three-party governing coalition has been rising for him to greenlight the provision of long-range missiles. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for long-range missiles to push back against Russian forces and cut off the Russian troops’ supply lines.
German-made Taurus cruise missiles can hit targets up to 500 kilometres away with great precision. Unlike Germany, the UK and France have already delivered long-range systems to Ukraine.
However, adjustments necessary to restrict Taurus’ “very far-reaching” range would require German soldiers to operate in Ukraine, which has so far been excluded as an option, and would, in any case, require an official parliamentary vote, Scholz said.
He also hit back at critics, saying he was “surprised that some people (…) don’t even think about whether what we’re doing could lead to a kind of involvement in war”.
“We will not become a party to the war – neither directly nor indirectly. These two principles guide all my decisions,” he later wrote on X.
Though Scholz’s stance on the matter has long been known, it is the first time the German chancellor voiced direct public opposition to a Taurus delivery to Ukraine.
Coalition pressure
On Thursday (22 February), German lawmakers from his own governing coalition had approved a resolution calling to provide Ukraine with “long-range weapon systems”.
Thus, coalition partners reacted with disappointment to Scholz’s comments.
“‘Long-range missile systems’ save Ukrainian lives, ‘long-range missile systems’ destroy Russian supplies, ‘long-range missile systems’ shorten this war that violates international law,” Ulrich Lechte, the lead MP on foreign affairs for the liberal FDP, a junior coalition partner, wrote on X.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), the influential chair of the Bundestag’s defence committee, reacted on X by saying that “Scholz cites a long refuted argument against the delivery of #Taurus (…) German soldiers are NOT needed on Ukrainian soil for Taurus”.
Green MP Robin Wagener, a member of the foreign affairs committee who worked on the coalition’s motion, argued that no vote would be necessary for Ukraine to operate the missiles in question, adding that Scholz might have been “badly advised”.
“This is not about saving face, (…) not about peace within the coalition, but about the liberation of occupied Ukrainian territories and the people who live there,” Wagener told Euractiv.
While Wagener noted that Taurus missiles “are not a silver bullet”, they are still needed to “destroy Russian missiles and ammunition”.
[Edited by Alexandra Brzozowski/Zoran Radosavljevic]
