The designated CDU chairman Friedrich Merz demands a “clear, robust response to Putin” in view of the Russian troop deployment. He advocates providing Ukraine with deadly weapons for self-defense.
    

The designated CDU chairman Friedrich Merz advocates delivering deadly weapons to Ukraine for self-defense.

    

In view of the Russian troop deployment in the country’s neighborhood, in an interview with the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” he demanded a “clear, robust answer to Putin”, namely “right up to the question of whether Ukraine should also be helped to deal with defensive weapons to oppose such a threat ”.

    

Ukraine’s requests for such weapons are “without a doubt legitimate in view of the massive deployment of troops by the Russian army on its eastern border”.

    

Ukrainian government representatives have asked Germany for older frigates, anti-aircraft cannons and components for anti-ship missiles, among other things. In NATO, a decision to deliver deadly weapons such as sniper rifles in addition to jammers for drone defense, so-called “whine”, failed because of objections from Germany and another country, according to information from the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. Merz said that if the information was correct, then it was “quite a mortgage”.

     

Germany has so far made non-lethal military equipment available to Ukraine, including for field hospitals.

     

The request for a frigate to protect the Black Sea coast from a Russian landing was rejected in Berlin in the spring.

     

The Federal Ministry of Defense under Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) signaled approval at the time, but the Foreign Office under Heiko Maas (SPD) refused.

     

So far, weapons have mainly come from the USA 

    

There have so far been voices among the Greens in particular that advocate a more determined stance.

    

The then co-party leader and today’s Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck, on a trip to the eastern Ukrainian war zone, called for defensive weapons to be delivered to the country in May and named among other things medical vehicles on which “a machine gun” could be mounted for defense.

     

Ukraine is currently receiving lethal weapons primarily from the United States.

    

The most important component of American aid are anti-tank missiles of the “Javelin” type.

    

There is an agreement with Great Britain to jointly build warships.

     

The country has been particularly vulnerable from the Black Sea coast since Russia captured a large part of its war fleet in the illegal annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.

    

This threat became apparent in the spring when Russia held landing exercises on its Black Sea coast.

    

Recently there has been a new threat to land.

    

Russia is gathering troops on the border and is calling on NATO to drop the promise of acceptance it made to Ukraine at the 2008 Bucharest summit.

     

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