{"id":137552,"date":"2025-05-28T03:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T03:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/137552\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T03:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T03:04:09","slug":"germanys-merz-under-fire-over-contradictory-remarks-on-long-range-weapons-for-ukraine-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/137552\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Merz under fire over \u2018contradictory\u2019 remarks on long-range weapons for Ukraine \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere is no sign of Germany finally delivering Taurus cruise missiles, because I still see no unity in the coalition and no political will to respond appropriately and with strength and consistency to Russia’s massive escalation,\u201d Kiesewetter wrote in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cSuch statements are therefore not helpful overall because they highlight Europe’s weakness to Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The confusion around whether Germany is prepared to provide Taurus missiles to Ukraine threatens to overshadow Zelenskyy\u2019s visit to Berlin on Wednesday. As Russia continues to hammer Ukraine with killer drone and missile attacks<\/a>, European leaders are under pressure to formulate a tough response.<\/p>\n

But Merz’s recent statements on long-range weapons for Ukraine have sown confusion.<\/p>\n

\"\"Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long asked that Germany provide Taurus missiles, which have a range of over 500 kilometers and carry a powerful warhead. | Sergey Dolzhenko\/EPA<\/p>\n

The backlash against Merz began on Monday after he suggested Germany and its key allies had lifted range limits on weapons<\/a> sent to Ukraine. \u201cThere are no more range limitations for weapons delivered to Ukraine. Neither from the Brits, nor the French, nor from us. Not from the Americans either,\u201d Merz said.<\/p>\n

The comments were widely interpreted to mean that Merz\u2019s government was ready to make good on his campaign promise to provide Taurus missiles to Ukraine in addition to more robust military aid overall. But on Tuesday Merz appeared to backtrack, saying his comments referred to \u201csomething that has been happening for months, namely, that Ukraine has the right to use the weapons it receives, even beyond its own borders, against military targets on Russian territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S., France and the U.K. have all provided long-range missile systems to Ukraine, and last fall moved to allow Kyiv to use those weapons<\/a> to strike targets inside Russia. Germany, however, has not provided long-range missiles to date, rendering talk of ending range restrictions from Berlin largely academic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere is no sign of Germany finally delivering Taurus cruise missiles, because I still see no unity in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[768,2001,2595,2000,299,1945,1824,660,2597,2598,33590,46,48,332,16,657,2601,1116],"class_list":{"0":"post-137552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-borders","9":"tag-communications","10":"tag-drones","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-friedrich-merz","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-kremlin","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-missiles","18":"tag-petteri-orpo","19":"tag-policy","20":"tag-rights","21":"tag-russia","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","25":"tag-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114583245241663770","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}