BERLIN — Germany upended years of policy and agreed to supply Kyiv with weapons and consider ways to shut out Russia from the SWIFT financial messaging system, signaling the depth of outrage in Berlin at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, facing his first international crisis as Germany’s leader, signed off on providing Ukraine with 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles and 1,000 anti-tank weapons from German stockpiles. His decision sets aside traditional German restraint on arms exports to war zones, a policy rooted in the country’s legacy of World War II aggression.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point,” Scholz said in a statement announcing the decision. “It threatens our entire postwar order. In this situation, it is our duty to do our best to help Ukraine defend itself against Vladimir Putin’s invading army.”
Scholz’s move, coupled with an escalation of rhetoric against Putin, came shortly after the government said it’s supplying 400 German-made rocket propelled grenades to Ukraine via the Netherlands, along with 14 armored personnel carriers, 10,000 tons of fuel via Poland and nine howitzers from the former East German army positioned in Estonia.
Amid intense trans-Atlantic diplomacy to marshal a united U.S.-European response ahead of Russia’s invasion, Germany is shifting ground after facing derision for initially declining to send lethal military aid to Ukraine and offering 5,000 helmets instead.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, who held talks with Scholz in Berlin earlier Saturday, praised Germany’s new stance.
“You can’t win a war with helmets alone,” he said at a news conference after returning to Vilnius. “It’s a breakthrough for this key European state and that’s something we need to appreciate.”
Scholz, a Social Democrat who took office in December, aligned with his Green coalition partners, who hold the foreign ministry in Berlin.
“After the shameless attack by Russia, Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said in a separate statement.
Germany’s reluctance earlier in the week to expel Russia from SWIFT, a system used for trillions of dollars worth of transactions between thousands of banks around the world, also was crumbling on Saturday. U.S. President Joe Biden singled out European resistance to such a move on Thursday.
Germany “is working flat out on how to limit the collateral damage of decoupling from SWIFT in such a way that it affects the right people,” Baerbock and Habeck said. “What we need is a targeted and functional restriction of SWIFT.”
Nauseda said he and Scholz discussed cutting Russia off from SWIFT.
“Germany is making preparations on how to compensate for secondary effects of this decision,” the Lithuanian leader said.
