German Chancellor Remains Firm – for Now — on No Taurus Missiles to Ukraine

The brainstorming by leading German Air Force officers, including the Chief Inspector of the Air Force, on options to deploy Taurus missiles against Russian targets such as the bridge across the Azov Sea (cf. above), does not have the backing of the German government – if one can believe the official statements. Both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius declared that there would be no delivery of the Taurus to Ukraine and no German personnel deployed to operate the system. However, discussions such as this one leaked by the Russians, reflect the unwillingness of military utopians in the West to accept that Ukraine has lost the war and that it is high time for ceasefire initiatives, preparatory to a peace agreement.

To deliberate on continuing the hostilities at all costs means marching straight into another round of escalation bringing the world closer to a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia and to the exchange of nuclear weapons. The refusal to recognize that danger, as German General (ret.) Harald Kujat said in commenting on that leaked session, has implications under criminal law, because it implies preparation for a war of aggression which the German Constitution explicitly bans.

The only reasonable alternative to a direct conflict between NATO and Russia would be to for Europe and the United States to accept Vladimir Putin’s offer of talks, which he reiterated in his recent exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson (cf. SAS 7/24). The Russian President added that he thinks the West would like to end this war, but does not know how to do it.

In that context, an interesting assessment was made by a former envoy of UN peace missions Michael von der Schulenburg, published by RT on Feb. 28. If Ukraine comes to the conclusion that the war with Russia is lost, it might not wait for a change of mind in the West but take up the Russia offer to begin talks. A resumption of direct negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow, he hints, like those that began in March 2022 but were sabotaged by the West (in particular by then PM Boris Johnson), might lead to a rather “unexpected end” to the war without involvement of the West. It could end along the following lines: military neutrality for Ukraine with no NATO membership, and Russian control over former parts of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, with Russian access to the Black Sea. Such a solution, at the expense of western geopolitical interests against Russia, would also be welcomed by the countries of the Global South, von der Schulenburg adds.