In Germany, the debate over whether to supply long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine continues, as does the leak of an audio recording of German commanders.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz seems to have ruled out the supply, at least for the time being, on the grounds that the missiles have too long a range and that Germany could be drawn directly or indirectly into a war if it tried to acquire them.
However, the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) support the idea and are organising a series of votes in the Bundestag to recommend sending the missiles. The next vote is scheduled for Thursday.
For the most part, with some high-profile exceptions, coalition members have followed the Scholz line in these votes, and CDU motions have been rejected.
However, leaders of the SPD’s junior coalition partners, the Greens and the FDP, have publicly supported the idea of sending Taurus or an alternative proposal involving a missile swap with the UK.
For example, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who visited Berlin last week, put forward an alternative proposal for the supply of Taurus missiles.
German-British ‘missile swap’ proposed
In an interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Cameron suggested that it might be possible for Germany to send Taurus missiles to Britain in return for Britain sending more Storm Shadow missiles (which have a shorter range and cannot reach Russia from Ukraine) to Ukraine.
Germany floated the idea months ago, at the start of the Taurus dispute, and initially received a cold response from London. Germany’s Green foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said on state television at the weekend that she saw Cameron’s proposal as an ‘option’, not exactly contradicting Scholz but at least raising new questions.
“This could be an option that would allow us to untie the knot,” said Omid Nouripour, a Green member of the Bundestag, in a television interview on Monday.
Germany recently persuaded Switzerland to start a similar exchange programme for German-made Leopard tanks, with Switzerland agreeing to return unused tanks to Germany and Berlin assuring Bern that it would send various vehicles from its warehouses to Ukraine.
Leaked audio worries government
On Monday evening, the Bundestag’s defence committee met in a special session to discuss the leaked Russian audio recording and what lessons should be learned from it.
In the 40-minute recording, four senior military officials discussed possible scenarios in the event of the deployment of Taurus missiles in Ukraine and said that the possibility of an attack on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea was being explored.
Investigations into the matter are ongoing, but preliminary findings suggest that Russia was able to eavesdrop on the conversation after a participant, possibly connecting to the online call from Singapore, failed to follow security protocols and logged in.
The MPs also plan to question Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, the chief of staff of the South African army, Carsten Breuer, and the head of German military intelligence, Martina Rosenberg.
“We want to know how this could have happened,” Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the Free Democrats (FDP), chairwoman of the Bundestag’s defence committee, said ahead of the session.
Strack-Zimmermann argued that the ministry should quickly complete its investigation and report, that the generals involved were ‘extremely capable’ and should be allowed to continue their work.
Known in the coalition government over the past two years as a leading advocate of sending more aid to Ukraine, Strack-Zimmermann was probably the most high-profile MP to break with the government, supporting the CDU’s proposal to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine in the last vote.
CDU/CSU and the Greens push for the Taurus
CDU leader Friedrich Merz said on Monday that he would prefer the delivery of the Taurus to a swap deal with Britain.
“This may be the second-best solution to achieve the goal, but it is not particularly honourable,” Merz said at a party event in Berlin. Merz said the proposal reminded him of the German saying ‘wash my jacket, but don’t get me wet’.
The CDU, Strack-Zimmermann and others questioned Scholz’s claim that German troops should be involved in some way to help the Ukrainians use Taurus missiles, and some said the controversy over the Bundeswehr leak also cast doubt on this claim.
In a guest commentary in Monday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, two senior politicians, Norbert Röttgen of the CDU and Anton Hofreiter of the Greens, accused Scholz of ‘catastrophic defeatism’ in his handling of the Taurus issue and ‘dramatically poor communication’ on the issue.
The politicians argued that Scholz’s portrayal of the situation had unnecessarily caused fear and anxiety among the population and that his claim that the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine would make Germany a party to the war was ‘factually and legally incorrect’.
