Despite promises, Germany minimized military support for Ukraine in 9 weeks and provided virtually no weapons.
Source: Welt data
Details: On April 19, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Germany does not supply heavy weapons, as other countries, such as the US, Canada, UK, France do not (although in fact the US and Britain, as well as Australia and the Netherlands, supply heavy weapons to Ukraine). As noted, for several weeks Scholz repeated that support for Kyiv continues, most recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “Putin will only enter into serious peace negotiations if he realizes that he cannot break the defense capability of Ukraine. Therefore We support Ukraine.”
But, as can be seen from the documents available to Welt, since the end of March, Germany has also hardly delivered any lighter weapons.
Between March 30 and May 26, Ukraine received only two shipments of weapons from the German government. In particular, Germany sent 3,000 anti-tank mines and another 1,600 specialized directional anti-tank mines, spare parts for machine guns, lighters, detonating cords, radios, hand grenades, and explosives. According to Ukraine, the last deliveries of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons took place on March 25, more than two months ago – 2,000 Panzerfaust 3 missiles and 1,500 Strela anti-aircraft missiles.
The Ukrainian army also needs anti-ship missiles of the “Harpoon” type. Ukraine confirmed this in a letter to Germany dated April 9 and May 1.
Upon Welt’s request, a spokeswoman for the German Ministry of Defense stated that “information about specific arms transfers is security related and classified, so I ask for your understanding that I can neither provide further information nor confirm the details.”
Recall:
- At the end of April, it became known that the German Ministry of Defense had excluded all heavy weapons from the list sent by Ukraine, although the German industry is ready to supply many weapons in the short and medium term.
- The list sent by Ukraine with a request to provide weapons to fight the Russian invasion included a number of heavy weapons: Leopard tanks, Puma and Marder armored personnel carriers, Boxer and Fuch armored personnel carriers. In addition, Ukraine informed the German federal government and industry of the urgent need for multiple rocket launchers and anti-ship missiles, as well as anti-tank missiles such as “Milan” and “Spike”.
- The Ministry of Defense, at the insistence of the office of Olaf Scholz, began to reduce the lists, and as a result, the list of possible exports of weapons from the German military industry to Ukraine was reduced from 48 to 24 pages. All the heavy weapons that German industry wanted to sell to Ukraine disappeared. Of Ukraine’s 15 initial requests for weapons, only three remain, some of which have alternatives.
- The total cost of all “consolidated” German weapons for Ukraine is only 307 million euros, although the German government announced the allocation of 1 billion euros, most of which supposedly was supposed to go to Ukraine.