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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed on Wednesday that Berlin and its European allies would remain steadfast in their support of Ukraine even as members of his own coalition government fight bitterly over military aid for the embattled country.
“If the Russian president believes that he only has to wait out this war and that we will weaken in our support, then he has miscalculated,” Scholz said in the German parliament ahead of a two-day summit of EU leaders in Brussels. “Russia is not as strong as people now think.”
Scholz’s effort to signal European determination comes as members of his three-party coalition government, along with conservative opposition leaders, attack him for what they view as the chancellor’s failure to show resolve when it comes to Germany’s military support for Ukraine — in particular Scholz’s refusal to send Taurus long-range missiles to the country. The fight has grown more impassioned in recent days following comments by Rolf Mützenich, a lawmaker in Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), calling for German leaders to “think about how to freeze” the war in Ukraine.
In an interview on German public radio Wednesday, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the Bundestag’s defense committee and a member of the Free Democratic Party, a junior partner in Scholz’s coalition, hit back at Mützenich, calling the comment “social democratic appeasement policy that has never gotten us anywhere.”
Amid the feuding, Scholz used his speech in the legislature to signal resolve on the European level, vowing that France, Germany, Poland and other EU nations would “support Ukraine for as long as necessary” while ensuring that “NATO does not become a party to the war.”
EU leaders, he added, “will not accept a dictated peace at the expense of Ukraine.”
Scholz also said that European governments must work more closely to acquire weapons for Ukraine, including by purchasing weapons outside the EU.
Denis Leven is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.
