BERLIN, August 18. /TASS/. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday that he sees his government’s task in not letting Germany be dragged into the conflict in Ukraine.
"I am doing my best to prevent this," he said during a discussion organized by the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper when asked about the risk that Germany could be drawn into the conflict. "That is why, for instance, there are no German soldiers in Ukraine and there will not be any," he pledged.
"We will support Ukraine and we are supplying weapons, which is a violation of the taboo - in recent decades Germany has never supplied any weapons to conflict zones, with rare exceptions," he said, adding however that he thinks that it was a right decision to provide Kiev with weapons because "Russia invaded the neighboring country to seize its territory, which is unacceptable."
At the same time, in his words, while making decisions the German government has been keeping a close eye on what its allies are doing to avoid a possible confrontation between Russia and NATO. "And this has always been our principle," he stressed. "We have always been weighing our decisions and will continue to do so."
According to Scholz, it was the right decision to supply Leopard tanks to Ukraine only is the Americans send their combat vehicles as well.
Germany is second after the United States in terms of military assistance to Kiev. he Russian side has repeatedly stressed that the West’s weapons supplies to Kiev and its assistance in training Ukrainian troops only prolong the conflict and will not change the situation on the battlefield.