British Foreign Secretary David Cameron met his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock in Berlin on Thursday to discuss support for Ukraine, including the provision of long-range missile systems.
The UK-Germany Strategic Dialogue was established in 2021 to facilitate more in-depth discussion of current foreign policy issues. This time, the meeting was preceded by a renewed public debate over the supply of German Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine.
“Unless a NATO soldier is killing a Russian soldier, nothing should stop us helping,” Cameron told the closing press conference, expressing scepticism about claims that the new weapons systems would escalate the conflict.
Britain has been supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine for some time, but German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has so far blocked any such move by his country.
The German-made Taurus missiles have a range of 500 kilometres and can hit targets with great precision.
Although both ministers agreed that discussions on the differences should take place behind closed doors, Cameron expressed his support for providing Ukraine with long-range weapons. “Of course we also come to the question of what we can achieve in terms of medium and long-range missiles,” Cameron said, arguing that peace is ‘achieved by force, by showing that Putin cannot win’.
Without directly referring to long-range weapons systems, Baerbock agreed that ‘anyone who wants to put an end to Russia’s deliberate war of aggression and destruction must now mobilise all means of self-defence for Ukraine’. The German minister also argued that ‘those who ignore this are acting negligently’.
Cameron also stressed the need to support Ukraine, saying that it should ask itself whether it had ‘given them everything they need to win’.
The German Foreign Minister responded by saying that ‘the German government asks itself every day what more we can do to support Ukraine as a whole’.
