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Euroviews. Germany's Olaf Scholz has become a major problem for Ukraine

2024-03-06 00:00:00.0 欧洲新闻电视台-欧洲新闻原网页

Another Russian warship has reportedly been sunk by Ukrainian sea drones in the Black Sea on Tuesday, the latest in a series of strikes that has crippled Moscow’s naval capability and limited its operations with the war now in its third year.

According to Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the most recent strike involved Ukrainian naval drones targeting the Sergei Kotov patrol ship near the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov.

The strike, which couldn't be independently verified, killed seven members of the Russian crew and injured six others, while 52 were rescued, the agency said.

The Russian Defence Ministry has not issued any statements regarding the incident. However, several Russian military bloggers have acknowledged the loss of the ship and reported that its crew was rescued.

Nuclear watchdog chief arrives in Russia for safety talks

The UN atomic watchdog agency’s director has arrived in Russia for talks on nuclear safety in Ukraine, where Europe's largest nuclear power plant is at risk amid fighting, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Tuesday night.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi arrived at the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday evening, where the Kremlin says he will meet with Vladimir Putin.

Grossi visited Ukraine in February, crossing the front line to visit the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as part of the IAEA’s efforts to prevent a nuclear disaster amid ongoing hostilities. He also held a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

He told reporters in Vienna that he considered it important to maintain a dialogue with both sides, and added that the situation with the plant, which is Europe's largest, “continues to be very fragile.”

Grossi said that on his Russian trip, he expects to discuss “technical issues” related to “the future operational status of the plant”.

The IAEA has repeatedly expressed alarm about the Zaporizhzhia facility amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.

The plant has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, seizing the facility shortly after.

Its six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

ICC issues arrest warrants for Russian military officers

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on Tuesday for two high-ranking Russian military officers on charges linked to attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

It's only the second time the global court has publicly announced warrants linked to Russia's war in Ukraine. In March 2023, the court asked for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing him of being responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine.

On Tuesday, the court announced warrants for Russian Lt. Gen. Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash, who was commander of the Long-Range Aviation of the Aerospace Force at the times of the alleged crimes. Also wanted is Russian Navy Adm. Viktor Kinolayevich Sokolov, who was the commander of the Black Sea Fleet.

They are wanted for the war crime of directing attacks at civilian objects, causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects, and the crime against humanity of inhumane acts.

“I have repeatedly emphasixed that those responsible for actions that impact innocent civilians or protected objects must know that this conduct is bound by a set of rules reflected in international humanitarian law,” ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said in a statement. “All wars have rules. Those rules bind all without exception.”

The court said that judges who reviewed the evidence presented by prosecutors said that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the two men are responsible for “missile strikes carried out by the forces under their command against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure” from Oct. 10, 2022 until at least March 9, 2023.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the warrants should serve as a warning to other Russian top brass.

"Every Russian commander who orders strikes against Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure must know that justice will be served. Every perpetrator of such crimes must know that they will be held accountable,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin welcomed the warrants, saying they were supported by evidence provided by Ukrainian agencies. He called them “another milestone in ensuring justice for all victims and survivors of this war."

After months of what appeared to be an effective stalemate, a new narrative of the Ukrainian conflict is setting in: unless the West both expands and speeds up its support for the Ukrainian military, Russia could soon have a major window of opportunity.

And with the US House of Representatives still yet to clear a new package of American military aid, European NATO allies are moving to ramp up their contributions to the war effort. But not all of them are on the same page – and the continent's largest economy is suddenly looking like a major political and strategic problem for both Ukraine and NATO as a whole.

Germany has been on a long journey since the Russian invasion in February 2022. The then-relatively new government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz oversaw a major change in German defence policy by announcing the country would provide Ukraine with military hardware, a move that helped prove how seriously the West as a whole was taking the conflict.

Since then, however, the Germans' part in the war has been somewhat muddled. On the one hand, German Euros and materiel have been reaching Ukraine, albeit on a stop-start basis. The country's defence ministry clearly acknowledges the seriousness of the conflict: it has increasingly urged Europe to anticipate a larger Russian threat to countries beyond Ukraine, and is deploying combat-ready battalions to Lithuania, meaning German troops will be stationed just 100km away from the Russian border.

But on the other hand, Scholz's government has lately been resisting pressure to share one of its most powerful military assets with the Ukrainians just when they need it most.

The item in question is the Taurus missile, a stealth missile with a 500km range – twice the range of the British Storm Shadow and French Scalp missiles, both of which have been used by Ukraine to hit major Russian military targets.

The Ukrainians have been asking for the Taurus system for months, but Scholz has so far refused. The chancellor has claimed that the missiles cannot be sent to Ukraine because it would entail putting German troops on the ground to programme them, a move that he claimed could threaten a dangerous escalation.

Scholz made a major diplomatic misstep at a recent summit when he implied that French and British forces are operating cruise missiles that are ostensibly under Ukrainian control – something neither country admits is happening. The head of the UK House of Commons's Foreign Affairs Committee called the remarks "wrong, irresponsible and a slap in the face to allies".

But worse than Scholz's refusal to send Tauruses to Ukraine was the recent leak of a recording in which German air force officers could be heard directly contradicting Scholz's argument, instead confirming that the missile would not in fact require the deployment of German manpower inside Ukraine.

The recording was revealed in Russian media, with Moscow threatening "dire consequences" for Germany if Taurus is deployed in Ukraine.

Former president Dmitry Medvedev, who has voiced some of the Kremlin's most extreme rhetoric since the invasion, responded with a pair of nationalistic tirades in response via the messaging app Telegram, sharing a Second World War-era poem entitled "Kill Him!" and writing, "The call of the Great Patriotic War has become relevant again: "DEATH TO THE GERMAN-NAZI OCCUPIERS!"

Caught out

That such a sensitive conversation could be recorded and leaked at all, not least by the Russians, has horrified many in Germany and NATO more widely. But the revelation that Scholz's public pretext for withholding the Taurus is baseless has caused deep anger.

According to Benjamin Tallis, Senior Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, the recording shows that the chancellor is not truly committed to a Ukrainian victory.

"Holding back like this risks a Ukrainian defeat, which would put all of Europe at great risk" he told Euronews. "Scholz's arguments have been dismantled one by one and revealed to be excuses. Allies have sent similar weapons and faced no retaliation. All Scholz is doing is projecting weakness and making Germany more of a target.

"Following the Taurus leak, it seems that what Scholz is really afraid of is the weapon's effectiveness. This betrays his position of not wanting Ukraine to win – and it's an approach that lets down all Europeans by making us less safe."

The saga of the Taurus missile and the leaked recording comes at an extremely inopportune moment in the Ukrainian conflict.

Recent Russian advances in the east of the country have owed a lot to a shortage of ammunition on the Ukrainian side, which Kyiv and some of its allies have attributed to certain Western countries' slowness to resupply the war effort.

Aside from continuing to inflict major casualties on the Russian military – which Kyiv claims has lost well over 400,000 troops since February 2022 – the Ukrainian Armed Forces are currently focusing on destroying high-value military assets that the Russians will struggle to replace, among them a high-tech Russian patrol ship that was hit by a sea drone on 4 March.

These strikes have multiple benefits: aside from costing nothing in Ukrainian lives, they both undermine Russia's tactical abilities and challenge the idea that its enormous resources offer anything like a guarantee of victory. The same goes for missile and drone strikes within Russian territory, particularly in the border region of Belgorod, which Ukraine has targeted multiple times.

But without enough Western hardware to continue these efforts, and with ever more reports of troops retreating from positions with depleted ammunition, Ukraine will struggle to keep its closest allies' hopes alive.

The Czech and French presidents said Tuesday their countries remain united in their support of Ukraine's fight against Russian aggression and are ready to look for new ways of helping the Ukrainians succeed.

“We agree that the only option for us is to continue supporting Ukraine,” Czech President Petr Pavel said. “We’ve agreed that Europe has to play a bigger role in helping Ukraine.”

Pavel said that all options had to be considered but ruled out deploying combat troops in Ukraine, an idea French President Emmanuel Macron floated last week, prompting an outcry from other European leaders. Later, French officials sought to clarify Macron’s remarks and tamp down criticism while insisting on the need to send a clear signal to Russia that it cannot win in Ukraine.

“We haven’t talked about it at all,” Pavel said. “We’re talking about various forms of assistance.” He suggested the training of Ukrainian soldiers may take place in their home country despite the ongoing conflict.

“Russia must not win the war,” Macron said in Prague. “We must all be aware that this war affects us all.”

He said European nations cannot put constraints on themselves when Russia has no limits, including threatening the use of nuclear weapons.

“It’s a strategic leap that I called for and that I fully embrace,” Macron said. "We must be rational about the reality of the situation playing out in Europe.”

“I am convinced that the clarity of these words is precisely what Europe needed,” he said. “Ask President (Vladimir) Putin what he is prepared not to do. Who started the war in Ukraine? Vladimir Putin, who threatens whatever we do, whatever we say, with nuclear weapons."

The Kremlin has warned that if NATO sends combat troops, a direct conflict between the alliance and Russia would be inevitable.

Last month, Pavel announced at a security conference in Munich that the Czechs had identified 800,000 pieces of artillery ammunition in various countries and were seeking funding for their acquisition to ship to Ukraine. Macron welcomed the Czech plan to acquire the ammunition Ukraine badly needed.

About 15 countries, including Britain, Belgium Denmark, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands, have voiced their support for the plan, the Czech government said.

Later Tuesday, Macron and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala signed a French-Czech action plan for a long-term strategic partnership that should further boost cooperation in nuclear energy among other fields, including defense, transport, science and culture.

Unlike some other European countries, the Czech Republic and France both heavily rely on nuclear energy.

The Czech government is currently seeking to build up to four nuclear reactors and France’s state nuclear giant EDF and Korea’s KHNP are the two contenders bidding for the project. They have to submit their final bids by the middle of April with a contract to be signed on the turn of 2024-25.

The first new reactor, located at the Dukovany nuclear power station, is set to be operational by 2036.

During Macron’s visit, the main majority-state-owned Czech power company, CEZ, signed a contract with France’s Orano for its uranium enrichment needs in an effort to eliminate the country’s dependence on Russia. Under this deal, the uranium supplied will be transformed into fuel to be used in the Dukovany plant.

Orano already provides the same services for the country’s other Temelin nuclear plant.

Another French company, Framatome, was selected in 2022, together with U.S. Westinghouse Electric Co., to deliver fuel supplies for Temelin.

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关键词： Scholz's Ukrainian sea drones warrants Scholz Ukraine Czech Taurus troops Russia