Berlin’s stubborn refusal to keep pace with its Western partners in the effort to supply Ukraine with the heavy weapons it needs to counter a renewed Russian offensive is raising questions in Europe. “The federal government’s refusal to supply Kyiv with heavy weapons is increasingly putting Chancellor Olaf Scholz under pressure,” blurted a headline in Bild, the German tabloid.Poland’s former prime minister, Donald Tusk, tweeted that the Germans would have to do a lot more for Ukraine “if we are to believe that they have drawn the conclusions from their history.”Britain’s response to President Zelensky’s entreaties for more and better weaponry has been robust, meanwhile, to the tune of nearly $600 million in materiel already delivered. The country’s own history with Germany guides at least some of that commitment. Under the heading “Margaret Thatcher was right to fear German unification,” the British daily Telegraph newspaper posits that the Ukraine crisis has shown that Germany is paradoxically both too powerful and too weak. Nominally part of the Western alliance, its columnist writes, Germany has “always taken Russia far more seriously than anyone else in the West; there’s an almost mystical sense of connection, bound up as it is with history, culture and longing for the awesome expanse of the Russian hinterland.”If the purpose of NATO is “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” as articulated by the alliance’s first secretary general, Lord Ismay, then “despite the atrocities they visited on each other during the Second World War, there is a certain sense of pariah comradeship between these two great nations,” the columnist adds.In an interview with Der Spiegel, Chancellor Scholz said he believes that peace in Ukraine is only possible if Russia’s troops withdraw, and emphasized that the Bundeswehr’s options from its arsenal have been largely exhausted. The chancellor said Ukraine is helped most by equipment that can be used without lengthy training, and added, “The quickest way to do this is with weapons from ex-Soviet stocks, which Ukrainians are well acquainted with.”That view may not be incorrect, but it also does not do much to carry forward the narrative of empowering Ukrainian resistance. Contrast those remarks with the words of the British prime minister, Boris Johnson: “I can say that we are currently training Ukrainians in Poland in the use of anti-aircraft defense and actually in the UK in the use of armored vehicles.” He also said the British government is considering donating tanks to Poland to replace any heavy armored vehicles it might decide to give to Ukraine. Britain is “looking more at what we can do to backfill in countries such as Poland who may want to send heavier weaponry to help defend the Ukrainians,” Mr. Johnson said. The Daily Mail reports that Mr. Scholz has been criticized by President Zelensky as well as opposition parties in Germany for the apparent refusal to provide equipment, including tanks and howitzers, from Germany’s own stocks. He has claimed that sending heavy weaponry such as tanks would weaken its own defensive capability and leave Berlin unable to fulfill its own NATO requirements. Earlier this week Mr. Scholz instead said Germany would provide Ukraine with $1 billion to buy weapons. According to Bild, though, only yesterday he was accused of removing heavy weapons systems, including Boxer transport vehicles and German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks, from a list agreed to with Ukraine. According to the Daily Mail, the leak of the weapons list would confirm claims from the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, who said earlier this week: “The weapons we need are not even on this list.” The list is said to have come to $330 million, or about a third of that pledged by Mr Scholz.The chancellor has also been notably reluctant to slap an embargo on the Russian oil and gas that power the industrial heartlands of the Rhine. But are his worries about the economic repercussions of doing so overstated? Some in London certainly think so. The damage that could be inflicted on Germany by an immediate embargo on Russian oil and gas is “impossible to know until it is tried, but even if at the extreme high end of the range of forecasts — a six percent hit to output — it would be as nothing compared to what Greece suffered a decade ago at the hands of the high priests of monetary union; the longest and deepest recession ever recorded in an advanced economy,” the Telegraph noted.The Telegraph’s indictment of Berlin’s policy does not end there. “German officials excuse their failure to act by insisting that an immediate boycott of Russian gas is likely to have destabilizing economic effects both on Germany and Europe more widely,” it says. “The long-term social, political and geo-strategic consequences could therefore be far worse than the moral disgrace of lending continued succor to Putin’s illegal rampage.”
