There is a “consensus” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that weapons supplied by the West should not be used for attacks on Russian territory, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview on Sunday.
“There is a consensus on this point,” said Olaf Scholz interviewed by the weekly Bild am Sonntag. Ukraine’s allies have taken new steps in military support to Ukraine, pledging to provide heavy tanks and longer-range rockets, among other things.
These GLSDB (Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb) rockets could almost double the range of action of the Ukrainian strike force, according to the Pentagon, which announced on Friday that they would be included in a new American military aid package.
These small-diameter missiles fired from the ground can reach a target 150 km away and therefore threaten Russian positions behind the front lines.
Heavy tanks of Western design have also been promised to kyiv, which expects to receive “between 120 and 140” from different countries. Germany will deliver 14 Leopard 2 tanks taken from the equipment of its army.
“German tanks are threatening us again,” Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, drawing a parallel between his military campaign in Ukraine and the war against Nazism, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory against Hitler’s armies in Stalingrad.
“His words are part of a series of absurd historical comparisons that he uses to justify his attack on Ukraine”, commented Olaf Scholz in Picture. “But nothing justifies this war,” he added.
“Together with our allies, we are providing combat tanks to Ukraine so that it can defend itself. We carefully weighed each arms delivery, in close coordination with our allies, starting with America. This common approach makes it possible to avoid an escalation of the war”, assures the German Chancellor.
During the telephone exchanges he has had with the Russian president since the start of the conflict, Vladimir Putin has “not threatened” him personally, neither him nor Germany, specifies Olaf Scholz questioned on this point by Picture.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed in a documentary that the Russian president had “threatened” him by mentioning a “missile” fire. The Kremlin had refuted these allegations.