Berlin - First, Germany said it couldn't spare any of its Marder infantry vehicles for Ukraine.
Then it was accused of scrubbing such items from a German arms industry list of what was available for Kyiv. Berlin has since proposed sending some Marders after all but to Slovenia, so that country could in turn send its old Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine.
And on Tuesday, the government said it would approve the export of German-made armored anti-aircraft vehicles to Ukraine.
“It's a complete contradiction,” Roderich Kiesewetter, a lawmaker with the conservative Christian Democrats, said of the government's various statements on sending heavy arms in recent weeks.
As defence leaders from more than 40 countries met Tuesday at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany, to synchronize efforts to provide military aid to Ukraine, Berlin was just managing to synchronize the position of its own government.
Two months after Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced an epochal change in foreign and defence policy for Germany, dubbed the “Zeitenwende,” its touted new era has been overshadowed at home by the government's hesitant stance on military assistance to Ukraine.
On Tuesday, as pressure mounted for more decisive action, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht announced at the Ramstein meeting that Berlin would greenlight Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to be sent from industry stocks. Manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann had offered to ready and send the 50 decommissioned Gepards in February.
“Germany, together with its allies, stands firmly at the side of its Ukrainian friends who are in dire need,” she said, acknowledging “criticism of Germany in recent weeks.”
“But the numbers speak a different language,” she said. “It is important to me that we continue to stand together here and not allow ourselves to be driven apart.”
In February, Berlin's announcement — two days after Russia's invasion — that it would send 1,000 antitank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles was heralded as a sea-change. It had previously maintained that Germany's world war history constrained it from sending weapons to an active conflict zone.
But policy has lagged behind political and public pressure, even as evidence of Russian war crimes has built and Moscow has announced a new offensive in the country's east.
Germany has still stopped short of approving requests from its arms industry to send more offensive heavy weaponry such as tanks and the Marders.
“The German government moves under one condition and that's overwhelming pressure,” Marcel Dirsus, a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University, wrote on Twitter. “They can't deliver self-propelled anti-aircraft systems until they can. It's the same thing over and over and over again.”
Still, he said the announcement at Ramstein was a “strong signal” from Germany after so much reluctance.
While Scholz had pushed ahead with plans to bring the country into a new age of military deterrence, with plans to buy F-35 fighter jets and armed drones, the decision to not send heavy weaponry such as tanks and anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine had drawn criticism not just from the opposition, but also from the ranks of the government's three-party coalition.
“He has to lead,” said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, head of the German parliament's defence committee, who has emerged as one of the chancellor's most vocal critics. Her Free Democratic Party, a junior coalition partner in government, on Saturday voted in favour of supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons, including the “rapid provision“ of arms from the German Defense Ministry.
The chancellor, known for his cautious public style, is suffering from a communication problem, she said. “The really big problem is not that we send not enough weapons, it's how you talk about it,” she said.
Until just last week, Scholz had maintained that Germany sending heavy weaponry could trigger a broader conflict.
“We must do everything possible to avoid a direct military confrontation between Nato and a highly armed superpower like Russia, a nuclear power,” Scholz said.
The Washington Post