প্রকাশ: 27/04/2022
Germany announced on
Tuesday its first delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine to help it
fend off Russian attacks, after weeks of pressure at home and abroad to do so
amid confusion over its stance.
German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said the government,
which is also racing to reduce its heavy reliance on imported Russian energy,
had approved the delivery of Gepard tanks equipped
with anti-aircraft guns from the stocks of company KMW on Monday.
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said he welcomed Germany's
decision to "send 50 Cheetah systems".
"Those systems will provide real capability
for Ukraine," he said after talks with Lambrecht and dozens of their
counterparts at the US Ramstein Air Base in western Germany.
Marcel Dirsus, non-resident fellow at Kiel University's
Institute for Security Policy, said the real significance of Germany's decision
lay not in the difference the Gepards would make on the battlefield but in the
signal it sends.
"Europe's largest economy is getting serious about
supporting Ukraine, and more help is coming," he said.
Critics, including Ukraine's ambassador to Germany,
have accused Berlin of dragging its heels on giving heavy weapons
to Ukraine and on other measures that could help Kyiv repel Russian
forces, such as an embargo on Russian energy imports.
They say Berlin is not showing the leadership expected of a
major power and that its hesitations - amid concerns over the economic impact
in Germany of barring supplies of Russian gas - are costing Ukrainian lives.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has countered that the armed forces,
the Bundeswehr, are already at the limit of what they can spare, while the
weaponry that industry could provide lacks ammunition and needs upgrading.
RISK
Scholz, a Social Democrat whose party long championed
rapprochement with Russia after World War Two, also warned of the risk of
Moscow perceiving Germany as a party to the conflict, which could lead to a
"third world war".
However, even members of the the two junior partners in his
three-way governing coalition, the Greens and Free Democrats, have questioned
this reasoning, saying Germany needs to do more.
Ukrainian pleas for heavy weapons have intensified since
Moscow shifted its offensive to the eastern region of Donbas, seen as better
suited for tank battles than the areas around the capital Kyiv where much of
the earlier fighting took place.
The announcement of Gepard deliveries came after reports on
Monday that defence company Rheinmetall had requested government approval for
the delivery of 100 old Marder infantry fighting vehicles and 88 old Leopard
1A5 tanks to Ukraine.
Moscow describes its actions in Ukraine, now entering a
third month, as a "special military operation" that aims to degrade
the military capabilities of its southern neighbour and root out what it calls
dangerous nationalists.
Ukraine and its Western supporters call this a false
pretext for an unprovoked war to seize territory. Ukrainian forces have mounted
stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping economic sanctions on Russia
in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.
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