German Intransigence on Ukraine Military Materiel

"It was right and it is important that we didn't let ourselves be driven [into making the decision]."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

 

"With spring approaching, Ukrainian forces are working to defend the territory they hod and preparing for additional counter offences."

"To liberate their land, they need to be able to counter Russia's evolving tactics and strategy on the battlefield in the very near term."

U.S. President Joe Biden

 

"German main battle tanks, further broadening of defence support and training missions, green light for partners to supply similar weapons."

"Just heard about these important and timely decisions in a call with Olaf Scholz."

"Sinecrely grateful to the chancellor and all our friends in [Germany]."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Germany's Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come under pressure to supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks   Reuters

All NATO members were in agreement; it was necessary to work together as a supportive team to render to Ukraine all the support it needed -- both in terms of expressions of support and the supply of military weapons -- to allow the country to continue defying the intentions of the Kremlin to return Ukraine to a vassal state. Finally, it has been decided; France, the U.K., the U.S., Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, (Canada) and Sweden are to send hundreds of tanks and heavy armoured vehicles to help fortify Ukraine's efforts to break through entrenched Russian lines on Ukrainian territory.

It has been weeks of speculation finally come to a crescendo, and a conclusion. Ukraine repeatedly asked its allies to send it tanks so it could counter Moscow's suspected plans of moving forward again with heavy armed vehicles once spring arrives. When the terrain, now semi-frozen, and as winter wears on, will become a bog, and finally settle into a hard, dry landscape once again able to hold the weight of tons of steel, enabling the Russian military to launch another assault to retake territory the Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated.

The tense anxiety over Germany's steadfast reluctance to release large arms just as fellow NATO members were urging and themselves committing to, has finally come to a head. German prevarication, citing its sense of responsibility after its horrendous performance in World War II and the Holocaust years, restrained it from become embroiled in a situation that could conceivably lead to another world war; it was fearful of escalating the situation into a wider conflict from the Ukraine-Russia theatre.

How very noble, somewhat tardy but Germany has officially discovered its conscience, taking full responsibility for forcing years of viciously destructive conflict on the world, for destroying tens of millions of lives. Well, what if there was a different, more complicated backstory that might be substantially less noble that caused Germany to balk and play for time over supplying Ukraine with the means to defend itself? 

 

Many issues raise themselves for scrutiny by a jaundiced eye. Take the mid-2000s when investment in new pipelines for greater access to plentiful and inexpensive Russian gas reserves, bypassing the pipelines that ran through Poland and Ukraine, despite being warned of the potential for security implications of such pipelines. Where Germany would be crucially dependent on Russian gas and Moscow could get on with its near-abroad expansion plans wile continuing energy exports.

 

In years past Russia punished Ukraine and Western Europe with diminished gas flows as a method of control and discipline when Moscow felt so inclined. There is also the issue of elite German political figures being drawn into the Russian sphere of energy influence; Gerhard Schroeder with his close relations with Moscow and President Putin leading his advocacy for Nord Stream 1.  A project for which he was eventually pleased to act as chairman; what! a former chancellor chairing another country's energy project?!

 

For his troubles he is reputed to have been graced with $1 million annually from Russian gas companies. Succeeding Schroeder, Angela Merkel opposed Ukraine's request for NATO membership, believing Vladimir Putin could be reasoned with. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was approved in 2015 by Frau Merkel, a year following President Putin's instigated rebel war in eastern Ukraine, and Moscow's occupation of Crimea and its annexation. Her successor, Olaf Scholz is a Schroeder protege.

 

In 2021 two senior German officials at the German economic ministry were investigated for their roles in energy supply while spying for Russia.A senior ruling government official last year installed a fraudulent environmental foundation enabling Moscow to bypass U.S. sanctions, receiving 192 million euros from Gazprom, used to help complete Nord Stream 2. This operation was known to both Chancellors Merkel and Scholz.

 

At a time when Russian gas represented 55 percent of Germany's energy supply, Moscow's threats to cut energy exports to Europe was linked to its unspoken pressure to allow Russia its invasion of Ukraine without interference. It was only under intense pressure from other NATO members that Germany was forced to supply Ukraine with war materiel, although it continued to balk at sending them Leopard 2 tanks, and to refuse to give permission for their tanks owned by other countries to release them to Ukraine.

 

Lacking Berlin's approval, German-manufactured military weapons by law may not be re-exported elsewhere. The German government, in fact, did not reflect the opinion of the majority German population, in its refusal to allow military materiel to be sent to Ukraine. Its major focus as a government reflected the economic fallout from its loss of German gas supplies.

A German Leopard tank during exercises   Getty Images

Russia's 'Special Military Operation'

"I attended the funerals of young men the age of my sons. I've met women who saw their husbands summarily executed by Russian troops. I met people missing limbs, or handicapped from war wounds, often in the prime of life."

"Not yet a year into this war and the casualties, military and civilians, Ukrainians and Russians are already over 200,000. To what end?"

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine, this great madness, has laid bare the weaknesses of a corrupt and ill-equipped army that struggles to hold territory but can still inflict death on a nightmarish scale."

"The easy victory Vladimir Putin thought was his in a week, has turned into a bloody quagmire."

Paule Robitaille, Quebec journalist journeying through the former Soviet Union

 

"They just throw in bodies [as new Russian conscripts at the front line] until something collapses." 

"Their equipment is crap, their weapons are crap, but these human waves are killing us."

Dan Bilak, foreign volunteer, Ukrainian territorial defence

"What we're doing today including with our special operation, is an attempt to stop this war and protect our people who live on these territories."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Getty Images

 

This is the explanation Mr. Putin gave in 2014 when he annexed the Crimean Peninsula and armed ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels living in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. This is what conquest of foreign regions is all about; claiming another nation's geography as one's own by sending in colonies of ethnics to give weight to the conquering state's power and entitlements. During the Soviet era of occupation of its satellite neighbours, ethnic Russians moved to the new territory as settlers consolidating Russian primacy.

Russians living in the 'near abroad' are used by the Kremlin in its stealth movements and threats of reoccupation, of restoring the territories controlled by the USSR. And Mr. Putin's explanation of Russia's obligation to uphold the right of ethnic Russians in protection of their language, their customs, their history and their political aims that coordinate with Moscow's gives the entitlement of forceful entry and violent conflict. As happened in Georgia, and then Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the Donbas.

Russia, portraying Ukraine as the aggressor, and itself as the liberator. The approach that fascism rules supreme in Ukraine and it is Russia's mission to save Ukraine from itself. Ukrainians have not, by and large, honoured that scenario. The 'liberating' Russian military has flaunted all modern and universally accepted protocols of warfare focusing on sparing civilian populations direct conflict, left to the battlefield of opposing armies. 

 

The wholesale destruction of the Ukraine power grid in an effort to bring the country to its knees, the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, markets, apartment blocks, belies Moscow's protests at charges of war crimes. Mass graves, bodies lying in the street, direct witness accounts of human rights violations committed by Russian troops before withdrawing under Ukrainian counterattacks are more than ample evidence of the war crimes committed by Russia

With the help of the Wagner Group mercenaries, of Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechen military threat, the militias of the ethnic Russian separatist militias and others the Ukrainian counteroffensive has had its struggle cut out, but has acquitted itself admirably in retaining captured towns and villages and pushing Russian forces back to the front lines. An estimated 500 military deaths daily in heated combat appears not to have persuaded the Kremlin to pull back and pull out of its ill-designed 'special military operation'. 

The Ukrainian resistance, the level of determination and courage demonstrated by a military whose members only in the last several years were exposed to modern military strategies by NATO-member training sessions and supplied, hesitantly at first, then with growing impetus in larger, more effective military resources to counteract the Russian advance, surprised the world at large and gave heart to the Baltic nations who know that should Ukraine fall, they will be next; Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova among others.

 

Getty Images

"[Ukraine is anxious for supporting nations to send Leopard 2 tanks and to] immediately, officially request the German government to allow delivery of these tanks to Ukraine". 

"This is the move that will make the whole situation crystal clear and we will see where it takes Germany. This is something that needs to be done right away and everything will become obvious."  

"[I am] confident [Germany would supply the tanks eventually]: We already received British Challenger. They said it would be impossible... Every time in the end we obtained the desired result. We will have it this time as well."

Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba