Ukraine, international politics: long-range weapons supplies, May 2022

Germany approves the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine

(for the EIU)

At the end of April, the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany’s parliament, voted 586:100 in favour of supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine, amid its ongoing war with Russia. The proposal was backed both by the coalition government and by the main opposition party, the Christian Democrats.

This was something of an about-turn on the issue, as only shortly before, Olaf Sholz, the German Chancellor, had been defending his administration’s unwillingness to take this step for fear of stoking the conflict. The decision represents a further stage in the transformation of German security policy in the wake of the Russian invasion of February 24th. Prominent among the military items now said to be sent to Ukraine by Germany are 50 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks.

The development was welcomed in Ukraine, where Germany has been viewed, perhaps unfairly, as among the least supportive of the European states, not only for its reluctance to send the weapons the Ukrainian authorities say they need now that the focus of the war has shifted to the more open terrain of the Ukrainian Donbas, but also for its continued reliance of imports of energy from Russia, which helps to fund Russia's military campaign and to offset the economic impact on Russia of Western sanctions. (In fact, the reduction by Germany of its reliance on Russian energy has been quite swift, given the short space to time, especially for coal and oil.)

It cannot be said, however, that Germany has led the way within NATO on the issue of arming Ukraine. This is so not only in regard to the US, which is supplying 90 howitzers (long-range artillery), but also to the central east European countries. Slovakia for example, has supplied Ukraine with communist-era S-300 medium-range anti-aircraft missile systems, while Poland alone says that it has delivered 200 T-72 tanks. Overall, aid to Ukraine from the Baltic states, including military aid, has been high in proportion to the size of their economies. While revitalisation of the NATO military alliance has been a notable outcome of the Russian invasion, therefore, the locus of initiative within it, at least on the question of war aid, might be said to have shifted eastwards.

The military significance of the supply of newer, heavier calibre, longer range and often more mobile weapons is twofold. First, whereas in the earlier stage of the war, Russian forces were able to take advantage of their superior artillery numbers and range to fire persistently from fixed positions at a distance—as in the case of the destruction of the city of Mariupol—the supply of newer, longer-range artillery to Ukraine may force both sides to adopt more mobile tactics as they attempt to destroy one another’s big guns (“counter-battery fire”). Second, building on Ukraine’s co-operation with NATO since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the training of Ukrainian troops in the use of more modern weapons in the latest phase of the conflict will bring the Ukrainian military further into line with NATO’s operational standards.

Since the latest, ongoing phase of the Russia-Ukraine war, focused on Russian efforts to expand its de facto control to the whole of the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, could prove crucial to the outcome of the conflict overall, the supply of modern Western heavy weapons gives Ukraine a better chance of effective resistance.