How long can Olaf Scholz last?

Just what exactly is going through German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s head? ‘Russia must not win this war’, he says. But it is less certain about who Scholz wants to be the victor.

Publicly, the Chancellor says that he is giving Ukraine the ‘strongest possible support’. But in a highly anticipated speech last week, he once again refused to deliver the heavy weapons Kyiv has been asking for. Many in Berlin were left wondering why Scholz chose to do the speech at all given that he had nothing new to say.

He was disingenuous in his excuse that the G7 had agreed that the Ukrainian army needed Soviet-era technology. The Netherlands, Canada, the UK and US have all said they would provide western artillery or armoured vehicles. Even his headline claim – that he would give Kyiv over a billion euros to buy weapons from German manufacturers – was deflated a day later by a report that Germany’s Defence Ministry had struck several types of weapon, including Leopard 2 battle tanks, from Kyiv’s wishlist.