Germany risks becoming a target for Russia – for the first time since Hitler

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, from Germany’s mainstream CDU/CSU conservatives, has caused a stir. This time with statements about German weapons in Ukraine. Or to be precise, how exactly Kiev’s troops may use weapons provided by Berlin.

Speaking at a public forum organized by a major German TV station, Merz declared that there are no range limits anymore on how far the Ukrainian military can shoot German weapons into Russia.

Merz’s statements managed to be both sensational (sort of) and a muddle. He implied that they mark a change, but by now his Social Democrat coalition partners and even Merz himself are saying the opposite: That he wasn’t telling us anything new.

It seems Merz has been improvising without thinking things through. In that case, no biggie. That’s just the way he is: Not as dissimilar from the American impulse monster Donald Trump as the dour chancellor from orderly Germany may wish to imagine.

Moreover, the weapons – the MARS II system and the Panzerhaubitze 2000 – that Ukraine currently has from Germany only have modest ranges (84 and 56 kilometers). Removing political limits on them is largely militarily irrelevant.

But what if Merz has been more devious? That is an interpretation popular with those German politicians who want to drag Germany even deeper into the great Western proxy war against Russia via Ukraine. For his fellow conservative – and head of the Defense Committee of the German parliament – Thomas Roewekamp, Merz’s explicit ‘no’ to any range restrictions for German weapons is meant to prepare the ground for delivering the powerful Taurus cruise missile to Kiev.

According to Roewekamp, under Merz’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz, the Taurus’ long range of over 500 kilometers was used as an argument against handing it over to Ukraine. By that logic, dropping range limits means facilitating the Taurus transfer, long the wet dream of German bellicist politicians, as well as some very high-ranking officers. Unsurprisingly, Germany’s militaristic camouflage Greens have already renewed their habitual calls for further escalation by delivering the Taurus to Kiev.

The great risks of this step are well known, but large parts of Germany’s elite seem to be in denial about them: Not only can the Taurus strike deep into Russia – or at least try, against Russia’s air defenses – and even hit Moscow, it is also a fact – as the head of the German air force admitted when feeling unobserved – that the Ukrainian military cannot handle the Taurus on its own. The complexity of its guidance, programming, and launching require that Germans will play a direct role in its use against Russia.

Therefore, even if fired from Ukraine, a Taurus would also be fired by Germany. Moscow – whether it intercepts the missile or not – will then have little choice but to consider Germany not ‘merely’ an important proxy force behind Ukraine, but a direct opponent. Russia would, simply put, be at war with Germany. A major Russian defense expert has already appeared on Russia’s most popular political show – 60 Minutes – arguing that in this case, Moscow should, at a minimum, conduct a limited, non-nuclear but certainly painful missile strike against the Taurus production facilities in Germany.

Delivering the Taurus to Kiev has always been an awful idea, especially because even German officers have long acknowledged that it cannot even make a decisive difference in Ukraine’s favor. All the Taurus can do is help a desperate Ukrainian regime escalate the war to a higher level by involving NATO member Germany directly. That is certainly a Kamikaze option that the most reckless hawks in NATO-EU Europe would welcome, insane as it would be.

So why has Merz sent this odd signal now? Is he one of those hawks? Does he want a direct war with Russia? Probably not, at least not too soon. For Merz is obsessed with the idea of massively remilitarizing Germany, precisely because he argues – and probably even believes – that it is far too weak right now. At the same time, he knows that this re-armament – with the explicit aim of providing Germany with the strongest army, at least in conventional terms, “in Europe” (let’s not dwell on his clearly politicized notion of ‘Europe’) – will take years. If, that is, it should ever succeed.

Merz claimed that his statement was the proper response to a wave of Russian drone and missile attacks last weekend. The German politicians who support the chancellor’s latest sally agree with this claim and depict these Russian attacks not only as large-scale, which they were and as Russia’s Defense Ministry has publicly recognized, but also as targeting civilians, which they clearly were not.

Yet the evidence contradicts both charges: First, it is obvious that Moscow was not aiming at civilians. How do we know that? No, you do not have to take Russia’s word for it. Instead, treat the question empirically and consider the following figures, reported not by Russian media, but by the important and reliable Ukrainian news site Strana.ua:

Over the last weekend, beginning Friday night and ending Sunday night, Russia launched a total of 92 missiles and over 900 drones at Ukraine. The Ukrainian military admits almost 30 direct hits on unspecified locations. Since Ukraine has a policy of not disclosing military losses while maximally exploiting civilian losses for information war purposes, we can assume that these locations were military or military-production sites, precisely as Russia has claimed. In addition, according to the Ukrainian Air Force and German mainstream media, during Monday night, Russia launched 60 drones at Ukraine.

What about civilian losses during these attacks then? Let’s be clear: Every human life is precious, every death terrible, and every injury deplorable. Yet proportions do matter. For the Russian weekend attacks, we find the following Ukrainian and Western (again, not Russian) figures about civilian losses: As of Saturday, the BBC reported “at least 13 people” killed and “56 civilians” injured in all of Ukraine.

According to Strana.ua, Russian air attacks during Sunday night left 16 dead, including three children, (a total of 12 deaths according to the Washington Post); Monday night – ten cases of injuries.

These figures aren’t perfectly clear. When the number of those killed, for instance, is reported as simply ‘people’ (not specifically ‘civilians’), it makes sense to assume that this does refer to civilians (because, again, Ukraine follows a policy of not disclosing military losses). There are some discrepancies; there may be overlaps.

On the other hand, unlike in the case of Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza – a textbook case of actually targeting civilians – we do know that there is no significant difference between the numbers we see and the actual numbers of victims. For Gaza, all figures we currently have are certain to be substantial undercounts.

The crucial point is as clear as can be: The figures from Ukraine do not constitute the footprint of attacks targeting civilians – especially if these attacks involved almost 100 missiles and nearly 1,000 drones. Indeed, these figures are not even evidence of Russian indifference to civilian losses. If anything, tragic as they are, they show that Russia must have taken care to avoid civilian ‘collateral damage’. In Ukraine, this may be a painful fact to acknowledge – in the West, a politically inconvenient one – but any other reading of the available statistics makes little sense.

It is not only Friedrich Merz, but also Donald Trump who urgently needs to get real about the above. Trump has posted that “a lot of people” are being killed. If he means Ukrainian officers and soldiers, then we simply don’t know. In any case, that is not a crime in war. And Americans have certainly never shown the slightest hesitation to kill combatants in spades (or civilians, for that matter).

If Trump means civilians – as his phrase “in cities” may imply – then he is simply wrong. One is one too many, as always, but if the US president wants to see what ‘a lot of’ killed civilians look like, again, he should look at Israel’s deliberate slaughter of the Palestinians. A slaughter he is supporting, aiding, and abetting no less than his predecessor, Joe Biden.

But back to Merz. There he is, making an escalating statement that seems to make an important difference, but then does not. Or will it, in the end? And his main reason for making it – or at least the main reason he has shared with us – is simply nonsense based on disinformation. What can we make of all that, except that Bismarck this is not? Not even Helmut Kohl or Angela Merkel, really. Maybe this is supposed to be an exercise in ‘strategic ambiguity’, a silly French habit recently proudly claimed by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius? If so, Berlin needs to become much more discerning about the Parisian fashions it imports.