The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, confirmed on Wednesday in the Bundestag (lower house of Parliament) his government’s decision to make Leopard 2 tanks available to Ukraine, and announced that Germany will coordinate the supply of these German-brand tanks by other European countries that possess them, which will be authorized to deliver them to Kyiv.
At the same time, he warned that military support for Ukraine must be done avoiding an escalation with Moscow that directly confronts Russia and NATO. “Germany will always respond when it comes to supporting Ukraine; but at the same time we must avoid an escalation of the war into a war between Russia and NATO, and we will always keep this principle in mind,” Scholz told deputies.
The chancellor defended the actions of his government, which for a long time resisted the supply of these heavy tanks despite intense international pressure, arguing that it was not appropriate for Germany to act alone. “It was correct and it is correct that we did not get carried away, but that we have had the close cooperation [of the allies] and we will continue like this,” he said before the chamber. It was a pre-scheduled question session.
Scholz explained to the deputies that he had spoken by telephone with the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski. The first shipment of German tanks, coming from his army stocks, will be 14 tanks, ie one company. At midmorning there had been a first official confirmation from the government spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit. The goal is to “quickly assemble two Leopard 2 tank battalions; Germany in a first step will make available fourteen Leopard 2 A6s from the stocks of the Bundeswehr [German armed forces],” the spokesman said. The German government also explained that the training of Ukrainian soldiers in the handling of Leopard tanks will begin quickly on German soil.
Scholz specified in the Bundestag that Germany will coordinate the plan whereby several European countries with variants of the Leopard in their armies will also send some to Ukraine, including Poland, Finland, the Baltic countries and Spain. To this arsenal would be added the 30 American Abrams cars that the United States will send as part of the agreement reached with Germany to unlock the Leopard, which Scholz had refused to deliver for weeks.
This decision represents a new qualitative leap in the German position on the shipment of German-made weapons abroad after the first fundamental turnaround announced at the end of February 2022, three days after the start of the Russian invasion. Then, in an extraordinary session also in the Bundestag, Scholz spoke of the Zeitenwende (turning point) for the aggression of Vladimir Putin and announced, among other measures, the end of the German approach for decades of not supplying combat weapons to countries at war. , which was a political legacy in a democracy resulting from Nazi atrocities in World War II. Some now speak of Panzerwende, when the shipment of heavy weapons such as tanks materialized.