Yet again Germany continues to be all over the map when it comes to being of any help. I’m an American so it’s not like I get to speak on behalf of Ukraine or Ukrainians, but I do find it funny that their defense minister says “the Americans have also not provided long range missles” without pointing to the countless millions of dollars in ammo, billions in Artillery, the array of tanks and IFVs we’ve provided the training, the strong arming of other governments, the rounding of support from NATO for Ukraine, providing Patriots, and continuing to provide other logistics. Germany wants to claim giving them anti middle defense systems and some training as doing anything of value. The battle isn’t for Ukraine to stay where it is, the battle is to push forward and retake land. Give them what they need. I swear Germany is inevitably going to start WWIII (their streak continues) simply because they refuse to beat back Russia and stop a war immediately. I’d love to be peaceful and for us to not have to blow up other humans, but Ukraine doesn’t get that luxury right now and so I will do and allow things I’m not as comfortable with.
Україна Ukraine
Все про Україну Everything about Ukraine
I was hoping Germany was on track to start taking a leading role in the crisis but it doesn’t look like it. They have the excuse that the UK is providing Storm Shadow missiles so why not use that as an excuse?
They don't need any excuse. What they actually need is existing stuff to send to Ukraine...
Germany bought ~600 cruise missile nearly 20 years ago. Firing them is part of pilot training. The people telling you how they could make 450+ missiles fired in the last two decades usable again either believe in magic and fairy dust or are just straight out lying to you to make the government look bad (for basically every German source its the latter).
Also Storm Shadow has the same > 500km range. They got restricted for export to less range to not break export treaties regarding long range missiles.
But Germany doesn't export theirs to countries like India, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Egypt like France did. So there is no limited range export version or a normal production procedure to limit them to not break international treaties.
So this whole discussion is Germany refusing to build modifications from scratch for the few of their remaining ~150 missiles they could actually spare... for no actual reason than to stop the "Germany bad!"-narratives that will never stop anyway as you are just falling for the next narrative again and again and again.
@lusterko The Germans are ducking worthless. Paid off by Putin with the pipeline. It was a mistake to let them re-unify. They should remember when the Soviets occupied their country