• BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
    ·
    11 months ago

    You're right about the US specificaly maybe? They want the German Taurus and Germany doesn't want to. This week again another push and the only thing holding it back is the US approval.

    On Friday, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the defense expert from the Free Democrats (FDP), one of the coalition partners in the three-way German government, told the daily Rheinische Post that "Germany must finally deliver it in order to disrupt Russian supply lines" — "it" being a reference to the medium-range Taurus missile. Zimmermann also chairs the parliamentary defense committee,

    Scholz believes that delivery of the weapons would increase the risk of an escalation in the war and of Germany being drawn in. Taurus missiles have a range of up to 500 kilometers (311 miles), meaning that they could, in theory, be used against targets on Russian territory.

    However, Kyiv says it is willing to promise not to use the missile for this purpose.

    "It seems to me that Chancellor Scholz will make Taurus available to Ukraine only when the US supplies it with a similar weapon," Nico Lange, a defense expert and senior fellow at the Munich Security Conference, told DW. This might, for instance, be ballistic Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) with a range of around 300 kilometers. Last fall, the US supplied Ukraine with ATACMS missiles that had cluster warheads and a shorter range of around 160 kilometers.