German Bundestag may put issue of Taurus for Ukraine to vote

The Free Democratic Party (FDP) is considering bringing the question of supplying Ukraine with Taurus long-range missiles to a vote in the Bundestag, reports Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

The potential parliamentary initiative comes amid Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s continued resistance to providing Taurus missiles to Ukraine.

FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr said that money is not enough when the situation in Ukraine is dramatic. “We proposed finally delivering Taurus cruise missiles to them,” he said.

“That would be possible…I can quite imagine when I look at the statements from the CDU/CSU and Greens that such a motion could be successful,” he said.

The discussion emerges in the context of broader coalition tensions. Dürr said that his party had already pledged support for three billion euros ($3,2 bn) in additional Ukraine aid but opposed the chancellor’s larger 15-billion-euro proposal, which he claimed included 12 billion (about $13 bn) for SPD projects.

Berlin has been refusing to send Ukraine its Taurus missiles for months, despite Ukraine’s requests and appeals to other Western allies to allow deep strikes inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles. In late October, Chancellor Olaf Scholz reiterated his belief that transferring Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine is “wrong” and would trigger an “escalation,” implying the outbreak of a major war.

Opposition CDU leader Friedrich Merz supported delivering Taurus to Ukrainian forces, emphasizing that such deliveries would not make Germany a party to the war.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on her Green Party to maintain support for military assistance to Ukraine. Baerbock called for preparing “another large, large security package” for Ukraine and advocated for “long-range weapons systems,” though she did not explicitly mention Taurus missiles.

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