Ukraine knows where it can get which weapons from, said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba during a visit by Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock last Monday. It still sounded as if Kiev could live quite well with the traffic light coalition’s stance of not supplying lethal weapons. But the tone has changed significantly since then. The reason: nine medium-heavy howitzers of the Soviet type D-30, caliber 122 millimeters, range 15 kilometers.
Estonia wanted to leave these artillery pieces to Ukraine. However, she had received the Baltic country itself from Finland. There, in turn, the howitzers had come from Germany, from stocks of the National People’s Army. This supply chain brings Berlin back into play, specifically the Federal Ministry of Defense. Because every transfer to a third country – in this case the Ukraine – must be approved by the upstream suppliers, i.e. Finland and Germany.
Helsinki does not want to make the decision for Berlin
Helsinki apparently does not intend to make this decision for Berlin. Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said before the meeting of EU department heads in Brussels on Monday that it is up to each country to make its own decisions about arms exports according to its regulations. “Germany will make its decision and we will look at the situation afterwards.” At least it was said that Baerbock would speak to Haavisto on the fringes of the EU External Council, who, like her, belongs to the Greens.
Kiev, meanwhile, has sharpened the tone drastically. The German attitude towards the transfer of defensive weapons by third parties is “disappointing” and “does not correspond to the current security situation,” Kuleba tweeted at the weekend. He even accused the German government of “encouraging” Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch new attacks on his country.
The decision in Berlin has not yet been made. Deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann made it clear on Monday: “The federal government has not changed its attitude towards arms deliveries, especially lethal weapons to Ukraine.” Appropriate approvals would not be granted. However, she also says that “in this case it is not about German arms deliveries, but about arms deliveries from Estonia” – that leaves room for interpretation.
However, people in Berlin have a hard time with Kuleba’s characterization of a gun as a defensive weapon. Heavy artillery is one of the central points in the Minsk agreements brokered by Germany and France for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine – which shows how sensitive the issue is. Germany has also delivered defensive weapons to crisis areas – most recently Milan-Anti-tank missiles to the Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq to fight the terrorist militia IS.
In the meantime, the pressure is also growing domestically. The CDU foreign politician Norbert Röttgen said Süddeutsche Zeitung, he considers arms deliveries to Ukraine to be “morally and politically legitimate” in order to support their self-defense. But he thinks it is just as right if the federal government continues to refrain from doing so. It could make sense for Germany to “reserve special opportunities for talks with Russia that others don’t have and that would be severely damaged in the event of arms deliveries to Ukraine.”
Some people in Berlin suspect that Kiev is less concerned with the old guns than with cooling down the still relatively good relations between Berlin and Moscow. From Röttgen’s point of view, however, the howitzers are mounted differently. Estonia is bound to Berlin’s approval. “Politically, however, this is not a question that has to be decided in Germany,” he says. “The approval requirement should therefore be removed, and Germany should respect Estonia’s decision.”
The defense policy spokesman for the Union faction in the Bundestag, Florian Hahn, demands that the federal government should “examine specific requests from Ukraine with an open mind on a case-by-case basis”. Anti-tank weapons, air defense systems or ships for coastal protection have a clear defensive character, says the CSU politician. When Berlin prevents the delivery of old GDR howitzers, it comes across as “a historical joke that leaves all our allies shaking their heads.”
In the coalition, the chairwoman of the defense committee, the FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, had previously shown herself willing to “think about” inquiries from Ukraine and the German position. In May, Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, as co-chair of the Greens, said in eastern Ukraine that Ukraine could “hardly be denied” defensive weapons. The foreign and security politicians of the Social Democrats are remarkably quiet.
The Bundeswehr sends “Eurofighter” to the Black Sea
However, doubts about Germany’s reliability are apparently growing among some foreign allies, fueled by the debate about the controversial Russian pipeline Nord Stream 2 or demands that any sanctions should not harm the economy in this country. So the news came that the Bundeswehr would soon be helping to strengthen NATO’s presence on the eastern flank.
According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, the Air Force will be used for air surveillance in the south of the eastern flank, as it was last year. According to SZ information, a total of three are planned for February Eurofighter be transferred to a military base near the Black Sea city of Constanta in Romania. This year’s partner in the mission is Italy. However, the deployment of the fighter jets is not a reaction to the Russian troop deployment in the region or part of the additional troops promised by NATO, but a long-planned routine mission.