British MP Tobias Ellwood, the former chair of the Commons Defense Committee, evidently was already upset at Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not sending long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. After France’s President Emmanuel Macron had attempted on Feb. 26 to push 27 European nations into a “coalition of the willing,” including providing long-range missiles to attack deep into Russia and deploying European ground troops into Ukraine, Scholz’s explanation as to why Germany would not be sending its long-range Taurus rattled Ellwood’s stiff upper lip.
Scholz explained that German military personnel would have to be involved in the launching of such a complex missile system and, whether it were done in Ukraine or in Germany, it would constitute an act of war. It would be “not very responsible” for his country to risk becoming a “party to the war.” As opposed to what the U.K. and France had done, “German soldiers can at no point and in no place be linked with the targets that this system reaches … and what was done on the part of the British and French in terms of target-control and target-control assistance can’t be done in Germany.”
Ellwood exploded, calling the Chancellor’s comments “a flagrant abuse of intelligence deliberately designed to distract from Germany’s reluctance to arm Ukraine with its own long-range missile system,” as quoted by The Telegraph. That is, it was bad enough that Scholz was too timid to play nuclear chicken with Russia, but he also covered his cowardice by casting attention on actions by the U.K. and France that qualified as acts of war. Such a double crime by Scholz might have resulted in Ellwood’s tortured conclusion, that he was sure that Scholz’s words would be “used by Russia to ratchet up the escalator ladder.”
