Tag Archives: Olaf Scholz

German Chancellor accused of ‘flagrant abuse of intelligence’ regarding British and French ground troops in Ukraine

Zelensky-Ukraine

Important Takeaways:

  • German chancellor Olaf Scholz has been accused of a “flagrant abuse of intelligence” for divulging details of British aid for Ukrainian forces.
  • Scholz said Germany will not be sending Kyiv Taurus, Berlin’s version of the Storm Shadow missile, pointing to a risk of his country becoming directly involved in the war, referring to the UK and French assistance to Ukraine.
  • On Monday, he said that German soldiers could not follow the lead of their British and French allies in “the way of target control and accompanying target control”.
  • “This is a flagrant abuse of intelligence deliberately designed to distract from Germany’s reluctance to arm Ukraine with its own long-range missile system,” said Tobias Ellwood, the former chairman of the Commons defense committee.
  • Rishi Sunak on Tuesday confirmed the UK government has a “small number” of soldiers deployed inside Ukraine but added that Britain has no plans for a large-scale deployment of troops to the war-hit nation.
  • “Beyond the small number of personnel, we do have in the country supporting the armed forces of Ukraine, we haven’t got any plans for large-scale deployment,” the PM’s spokesperson told reporters, adding that large numbers of Ukrainian troops were being trained in Britain and London was supporting Kyiv with equipment and supplies.

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Germany’s Scholz supports mandatory vaccines by end Feb – sources

BERLIN (Reuters) – Olaf Scholz, who is set to take over as German chancellor next week, supports making vaccination against COVID-19 compulsory and backs barring the unvaccinated from non-essential stores, sources said on Tuesday.

Scholz and outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel were meeting regional leaders on Tuesday to discuss how to respond to soaring infections in a fourth wave of the pandemic.

According to sources with information about the discussion, Scholz told the meeting he was in favor of a cross-party initiative to make vaccines mandatory, with the hope that it could be put into practice by the end of February.

Neighboring Austria, which like Germany has a relatively low rate of vaccination compared with the rest of western Europe, earlier this month announced plans to make vaccines compulsory as of February.

Scholz is also in favor of making non-essential stores require customers to show proof of vaccination or recovery from COVID-19, the sources said.

Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases reported that 452.2 people per 100,000 were infected in the last week, down slightly from 452.4 on Monday. It was the first decline since early November.

Despite this, the number of new daily cases rose slightly on Tuesday compared to last week to 45,753, and another 388 deaths were recorded – the highest daily figure since early March. That bought the overall death toll to 101,344.

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Miranda Murray and Alison Williams)