“I am the Chancellor, and that’s why this applies,” says the head of government. Russia is already accusing Germany of being a party to the war in Ukraine.
Despite a Russian intercepted and published conversation between Bundeswehr officers, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) discusses the possibility of providing Ukraine with the cruise missile Taurus to deliver, sticks to his no on this issue. “I am the Chancellor, and that’s why this applies,” said Scholz on Monday at a discussion event in a school in Sindelfingen. “It cannot be the case that you deliver a weapon system that has a very long range and then do not think about how control over the weapon system can take place,” he emphasized. Scholz made it clear that the delivery was “out of the question” for him. He justified this by saying that a delivery without “control” was out of the question, but that this could only be ensured by Bundeswehr soldiers. The background to this is the Chancellor’s fear that Ukraine could use the cruise missile to attack Russian territory.