Germany Agrees to Send Tanks to Ukraine Amid Major Policy Reversal

A file photo shows Gepard anti-aircraft tanks in Eldelben, Germany. (Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images)

The German Ministry of Defense, in a significant reversal, announced Tuesday that it would send Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz voiced strong opposition to the move.

The decision to send the anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, which has been fighting a war against Russia for the past two months, was announced by Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht during a meeting at the Ramstein U.S. Air Force Base in Germany.

“We decided yesterday that we will support Ukraine with anti-aircraft systems … which is exactly what Ukraine needs now to secure the airspace from the ground,” Lambrecht said during a public meeting at the base on Tuesday.

Lambrecht also said Germany is moving to train Ukrainian forces in Germany, saying that “we are working together with our American friends in training Ukrainian troops on artillery systems on German soil,” reported Deutsche Welle.

Germany, which relies heavily on Russian gas, has been reluctant to send weapons or other systems to Ukraine amid the conflict. In February, Scholz blocked the sale of heavy weapons to Kyiv’s government and said that such a move would escalate the conflict with Moscow.

And Scholz, who took over earlier this year from former Chancellor Angela Merkel, told Der Spiegel last week that he wouldn’t send such items to Ukraine, claiming that doing so would lead to a nuclear conflict or a third world war.

“We need to do everything to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a heavily armed superpower such as Russia, a nuclear power,” he said. “I will do everything to avoid an escalation that could lead to World War III–there can be no nuclear war.”

He added that “to avoid an escalation towards NATO is a top priority for me” and he doesn’t “focus on polls or let myself be irritated by shrill calls. The consequences of an error would be dramatic.”

It comes as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Ukraine over the weekend and told reporters on Monday in Poland that the Biden administration wants to see Russia’s military “weakened” via the conflict in Ukraine.

“We want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country, able to protect its sovereign territory,” Austin said, according to a transcript of his remarks. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

The Gepard anti-air systems, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, were taken out of service about a decade ago, according to a German defense journalist, Thomas Wiegold, who spoke with Deutsche Welle.

“The German army has taken them out of use almost a decade ago, not because they were obsolete, but because at that time the [army] was scaling down and they had no use for it anymore,” he remarked to the publication.