The first came from the ex-Minister of Defence Ben Wallace after Scholz’s revelation that the U.K. and France are actively involved in targeting Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets. Wallace responded by saying Scholz is “the wrong man, in the wrong job at the wrong time.”.
François Heisbourg, a senior adviser for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, pointed out the incompetence in Scholz’s commentary on the matter on social media platform X: “Looks like Scholz cares as little (or even less) for his U.K. allies as he does for the French. Silver lining nonetheless: he’s unwittingly helping to break the taboo on the presence of NATO-member forces in Ukraine,”.
Olaf Scholz didn’t only receive criticism from the U.K. but also from his ruling party for refusing to provide Ukraine with TAURUS cruise missiles, the German counterpart to Storm Shadow and SCALP, Politico reports.
The current administration in Germany has been somewhat problematic with defence matters regarding aid to Ukraine and multinational projects.
Another instance of problems with military aid to Ukraine was the under-armoured and overpriced FFG AFV 4x4 vehicles that couldn’t withstand the heat of an active conflict. Additionally, The New Voice of Ukraine reported that PzH 2000 155 mm SPGs’ poor pre-delivery maintenance had caused failures in barrels and loading mechanisms because of excessive physical and thermal stress.
Despite a joint effort led by France and Germany to standardise the EU countries’ inventory, Germany made a surprising move by picking two of three air defence systems, foreign, American Patriot and Israeli Arrow 3, for the European Sky Shield programme. This angered France, which developed a counterpart to Patriot with Italy, SAMP-T, for not picking a system made in Europe.
