By Andreas Rinke
KYIV (Reuters) -Friedrich Merz, frontrunner in the race to become Germany’s next chancellor, used an election-time visit to Kyiv to condemn his country’s policy on arming Ukraine as akin to making the country fight with one arm tied behind its back.
Merz, leader of the opposition conservatives, is a critic of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s refusal to follow Britain, France and the United States in sending Kyiv longer-range weapons capable of striking deep inside Russian territory.
Merz’s centre-right party alliance is the clear favourite to unseat the Social Democrat, Scholz, in Germany’s Feb. 23 vote, enjoying a lead of more than 10 percentage points in most polls.
“We want your army to be capable of hitting military bases in Russia. Not the civilian population, not infrastructure, but the military targets from which your country is being attacked,” he told President Volodomyr Zelenskiy.
Scholz has resisted Zelenskiy’s requests for Germany’s Taurus cruise missile, whose range and power he said would bring an unacceptable risk of escalation and might be construed as tantamount to Germany joining the war.
Military experts believe the Taurus, with its bunker-busting warhead, could be instrumental in destroying targets like the Kersh bridge that links Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, with Russia’s mainland.
“With these range limits, we are forcing your country to fight with one hand tied behind your back,” Merz said.
Germany is the second largest provider of financial and military support to Ukraine after the U.S. and hosts more Ukrainian war refugees – over a million – than any other country.
With a flagging economy, questions of war and peace, and Germany’s capacity for hosting refugees all high on the public agenda, populist left and far-right parties are taking aim at the hitherto broad consensus on backing Ukraine.
Scholz and Merz have both made Ukraine a campaign centrepiece in different ways. Merz’s visit follows Scholz’s own overnight train journey last week for a coveted photo opportunity with Ukraine’s leader.
Despite a track record of strong backing for Ukraine, Scholz, mindful of his more dovish voter base, now portrays himself as a peace candidate, warning voters against what he says is Merz’s willingness to escalate a conflict with a nuclear-armed power.
“Only if Ukraine is strong will (Russian President Vladimir) Putin be prepared to enter into negotiations at all,” Merz said on arrival in the capital, adding he wanted to assure the Ukrainian leadership of his conservative bloc’s support.
Zelenskiy, thanking both Scholz and Merz for their visits and Germany for its support, echoed Merz on the armaments issue.
“Putin doesn’t want to end this war. He must be forced to,” Zelenskiy said. ‘And he can only be forced if Ukraine is strong.”
($1 = 0.9472 euros)
(Editing by Bernadette Baum)
