Germany Eyes Plan With UK, France on Missiles for Ukraine

(Bloomberg) -- Germany is examining a potential swap deal under which it would supply long-range cruise missiles to the UK and France so they can arm Ukraine with their versions of the weapons.

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz has balked at sending Germany’s bunker-busting Taurus directly to the government in Kyiv because he fears the missiles — which can strike targets more than 500 kilometers (311 miles) away — could be used to attack Moscow. Supplying them to Britain and France would mean they could ship more of their similar Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles, which have a shorter range of around 250 kilometers.

Negotiations on the UK-proposed plan are ongoing, according to a person familiar with the deal, which was first reported by German news agency DPA and Handelsblatt newspaper. There are still a number of technical and logistical problems that need to be ironed out, added the person, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential planning.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was quoted as saying Thursday that he’s unaware of any such negotiations.

“If there are talks about it, then not in my ministry,” Pistorius said in an interview with Bild newspaper, Welt TV and Politico. If officials in Scholz’s office are discussing the plan, they would have to determine “whether it’s viable or not,” he added.

The UK defense department neither denied nor confirmed the plan. “The UK and our partners, including Germany, continue to work together to equip Ukraine as best we can to defend its sovereign territory,” a ministry spokesperson said. The French defense ministry declined to confirm the talks, without elaborating, while an official in French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said there are no negotiations with Germany on any such deal.

Read More: Germany and France Point Fingers Over Ukraine Weapons Deliveries

In recent weeks, Scholz has made repeated calls for European allies to send more weapons to Ukraine, arguing that Germany has contributed more than half of all military aid coming from the EU.

“I am rather irritated that I have to constantly face criticism in Germany that the government is doing too little and is too hesitant,” Scholz said Wednesday in an interview with weekly newspaper Die Zeit. “Yet we are doing more than all other EU states, much more,” he added.

The lack of unity comes at an awkward time as concern mounts that international support for Ukraine is flagging, with more than $100 billion in US and EU funding held up due to political wrangling.

Marcus Faber, a member of the defense committee in Germany’s lower house of parliament for the ruling Free Democrats, criticized the reported swap deal, calling it “only the second-best solution for Ukraine.”

“The Taurus is more accurate and its range gives the pilots I spoke to certainty against the occupying forces’ air defenses,” Faber said in a post on social media platform X.

The Taurus is manufactured by MBDA Deutschland GmbH and Sweden’s SAAB AB. MBDA also makes the Storm Shadow and Scalp.

--With assistance from Kitty Donaldson, Michael Nienaber, Samy Adghirni and Ania Nussbaum.

(Updates with additional German, French comment starting in fourth paragraph)

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