BERLIN, December 17. /TASS/. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he hopes that the United States’ position on long-range weapons for Ukraine will change after Donald Trump takes office.
Presenting the election program of his party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), at a news conference in Berlin, Scholz, the party’s nominee for chancellor, said that he could see that Trump is on his side regarding his refusal to supply Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine. He once again said that he thinks that allowing Ukraine to use long-range weapons for strikes inside Russia is the "wrong decision."
"If I understand correctly, this will be viewed similarly in the future, including within transatlantic cooperation. At least, that’s what I gathered from President Trump's recent interviews," he said.
Scholz has repeatedly refused to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine, saying that this move would trigger serious escalation risks.
US President-elect Donald Trump told a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday that President Joe Biden’s decision to allow deeper strikes inside Russia was "a very stupid thing to do."
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said earlier that Trump's statement about the peril of using US long-range ATACMS missiles for deeper strikes inside Russia is fully in line with Moscow's position.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on November 21 that the United States and its NATO allies had announced their approval of the use of long-range precision weapons. Following this announcement, Russian military sites in the Kursk and Bryansk regions were attacked with American and British missiles. In response, Russia used its newest intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, in a non-nuclear strike targeting Ukraine’s Yuzhmash defense plant in Dnepr (formerly known as Dnepropetrovsk). The Russian president warned that the West could bring upon itself heavy consequences, should its inflammatory policies prompt further escalation of the conflict.