Scholz rejects Ukrainian use of German weapons on Russian territory

26 May 2024, Berlin: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) speaks at the Democracy Festival to mark the 75th anniversary of the Basic Law in Germany | Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa

Berlin (dpa) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is resisting a possible Western expansion in military backing for Ukraine, saying on Sunday he does not favour allowing Kiev to use German weapons to hit targets in Russia.

“We have clear rules agreed with Ukraine for the arms deliveries we have made so far. And they work. At least that’s my theory,” Scholz said at a Berlin event marking the 75th anniversary of Germany’s constitution, or Basic Law.

Germany has supplied Kiev with long-range artillery pieces such as the Mars II rocket launcher, which has a range of more than 80 kilometres, since Russia invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.

However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukrainian armed forces have been prohibited from using Western weapons to hit targets within Russia.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Zelensky urgently requested that Ukraine’s allies grant permission for weapons to be used to target Russian artillery positions near the Ukrainian border.

Until now, Ukraine has only been able to hit targets in Russia using drones produced within its own territory.

Green Party politician Anton Hofreiter recently became the first member of Germany’s governing coalition to publicly support loosening restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western arms.

“This is about protecting the Ukrainian population,” he said in an interview published by Germany’s Funke media group on Saturday. “International law allows an attacked state to attack military targets in the aggressor’s country,” he added.

According to a report in The New York Times, the US government is already considering authorizing the use of Western weapons on Russian territory.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said during a recent visit to Kiev that it was up to Ukraine to decide whether to use British weapons against positions in Russia. In response, Moscow summoned the British ambassador and threatened retaliation in the event of an attack with British weapons.

Meanwhile, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Saturday in Italy the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized democracies still have “a lot of work to do” on using interest generated from frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.

“We are prepared to take further and smarter entrepreneurial approaches to financing,” Lindner said at a meeting of G7 finance ministers in northern Italy,

However, the “risks for taxpayers must be minimized and ruled out,” he added.

EU member states previously decided to use interest from the €210 billion ($227 billion) in assets of the Russian central bank that are frozen inside the bloc to finance military aid for Ukraine.

The United States considers this approach to be too hesitant and instead wants the G7 to give Ukraine a large loan secured by the interest income. This loan could be for $50 billion — significantly more than the €3 billion envisaged by the European Union.

Intensive talks on the details are set to take place in the coming weeks. The aim is reportedly to reach an agreement at the summit of G7 heads of state and government in mid-June in the southern Italian region of Apulia.