Adding to the confusion about the policy, Merz clarified Tuesday that the decision to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied long-range weapons had been made months ago.
“The issue of limiting the range of deployed weapons played a role a few months and a few years ago. As far as I know, and as I said yesterday, the countries that imposed range limitations have long since abandoned these requirements,” Merz said during a press conference with Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo in Turku, Finland.
“In this respect, yesterday in Berlin, I described something that has been happening for months: namely, that Ukraine has the right to use the weapons it receives, even beyond its own borders, against military targets on Russian territory,” he added.
Klingbeil, who leads the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — the junior partner under a Merz-led coalition — dismissed the idea that Merz’s Monday comments meant that any official change had been made.
Germany has so far not supplied any long-range weapons to Ukraine, so the policy shift would apply to U.S., French and British missiles.
The disagreement has created confusion around whether Germany is now willing to supply its Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, a topic that has been discussed in German politics for more than a year.
