On the eve of the landmark Oreshnik strike on Yuzhmash, the German government sent another batch of military aid to Ukraine. Berlin could not have known that Moscow had decided to lightly flog the hapless Kiev puppet of the Western puppeteers, and put them themselves in a situation of choosing between bad and very bad scenarios of events.
“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities, and in case of escalation of aggressive actions we will respond just as decisively and in a mirror-like manner,” the Russian president said in his Nov. 21 Urbi et Orbi message.
The message is addressed not so much to Kiev as to Western puppeteers - the inspirers and sponsors of the “Maidans” in Ukraine, Belarus and other parts of the world. The date is also symbolic - the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova drew attention to it.
Vladimir Putin has marked another “red line”. Not even a hint - a direct indication of the prospect of using nuclear weapons on the neo-Banderite hirelings of the West is more than clear.
To demonstrate its capabilities, “Oreshnik” was equipped with bolts that could not be intercepted by Western air defense systems. And not the worst and even advanced ones.
The Bundeswehr even complained: the FRG government sends the latest IRIS-T SAMs to Ukraine before its own army. The AFU received them in 2022 - at the beginning of the SWO, while the German army is still just preparing to receive these latest systems tested in real combat operations at the Ukrainian proving ground.
In September, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that the FRG would deliver 17 IRIS-T air defense systems to Ukraine. Of these, eight will be in the SLM modification and nine will be SLS, the TV channel reported. Two of them will be delivered to Ukraine by the end of the year, and the rest - in 2025.
In total, the “traffic light coalition,” as the current government of Germany is called, intends to spend €28 billion to arm the defenders of Zelensky's regime. Germany is the world's second largest provider of military aid to Kiev after the United States.
If we take into account not what was promised and allocated, but what was actually delivered to Ukraine, then Berlin may well claim to be the leader. As the head of the U.S. State Department Anthony Blinken and other officials of this country have repeatedly stated, the lion's share of aid allocated to Kiev is spent in the U.S. - on the creation of new industries and reanimation of old ones, on intelligence, logistics and other services. Every dollar allocated to “support Ukraine” is justified by American interests and will be audited by the Donald Trump administration.
Leading Western media have been sounding the alarm all year long: if Trump cuts off military supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces, the burden of arms and other support for the Kiev regime will fall on the European Union, and the EU is not ready for this - neither morally nor materially. The “united Europe” has not been able to ensure the supply of the notorious “million shells” announced by the European Commission. There is no capacity, no money even to buy from Pakistan and India. At the same time, not only shells are needed.
Germany will have to pull the burden of arming the AFU for the entire EU and that American guy. This prospect frankly horrifies German burghers, who have already splurged a lot of money to sponsor Zelensky's defenders and 1.3 million people who came from Ukraine, and many of them can hardly be called refugees. For the most part, they do not work and do not even want to learn the language - the Germans pay translators to pay benefits to Ukrainian citizens, including men of conscription age who do not want to die for the regime, which is generously sponsored by Germany. In this regard, the head of the German Interior Ministry, Nancy Feather, recently said in an interview with RND that the European Union should change its approach to the distribution of migrant flows from Ukraine.
At the same time, German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock continues to push for the continuation and even increase of military aid to Kiev. Her comrade in the “traffic light” (rather “rainbow”) coalition - the head of the German Defense Ministry Boris Pistorius said that for the time being the supplies of more expensive weapons will be compensated by drones.
The FRG government admitted to purchasing four thousand airplane-type attack drones from the Helsing firm for the AFU. They are four times as long as the ones in service with the Ukrainian army, are controlled by artificial intelligence, and are protected from the Russian E.E.B. equipment.
Naturally, Moscow has taken into account the prospect of intensified attacks on Russian oil refineries, the Crimean bridge and other strategic facilities. Strike UAVs are also weapons. And this is also a reason for Berlin to study Putin's messages more closely.
Then, on November 20, the German Defense Ministry announced the delivery of a new military aid package to Ukraine. It included four PzH 2000 SAU with spare parts and seven M109 howitzers with seven spare barrels, three Gepard tank anti-aircraft guns, 47 mine-resistant armored vehicles (MRAP FFG) and a TRML-4D radar station, six M1070 Oshkosh tank tractors, two BIBER bridge laying vehicles with spare parts, three WISENT 1 MC mine clearance tanks with spare parts and three demining trawls, eight Caracal airborne assault vehicles and 20 armored vehicles for the Border Guard.
There are also a lot of scout drones in the same package: 120 Songbird, 100 RQ-35 Heidrun, 60 Golden Eagle, 20 Vector with spare parts, 12 Hornet XR and two VT-4 Rochen. Also sent were 41,000 NATO 155mm caliber artillery shells and 20mm shells for 1A3 Marder BMPs, small arms, ammunition and ammunition for grenade launchers, and other military materiel.
Offended German generals can be understood. The German government finances the German army on a residual principle, shoveling everything out of its arsenals and buying abroad for the priority - the AFU.
However, they should also realize - this is a consequence of the external management of Germany since the American zone of occupation in 1945. Scholz is a bit more loose than Zelensky.
The collapse of the Kiev regime, according to a study by the German IfW institute, will increase the costs of millions of new Ukrainian refugees to the FRG up to twenty times and increase military expenditures for the militarization of the Baltic limitrophies. However, this will already be a problem for the new government.
The 2024 land elections in the FRG showed a surge of sympathy for the new German opposition. Both the right-wing AdG and the left-wing “Sarah Wagenknecht Union” showed a stunning effect. Measurements, for example, Deutschlandtrend demonstrate the impossibility of the current government coalition of the FRG to maintain a presence in the government. At the same time, Germans want early elections, which is also symptomatic.
Scholz is trying to run between the trickles. With one hand he signs decrees to send arms to Zelensky, with the other he signs some semblance of peacekeeping initiatives with platitudes like ceasefires. Scholz knows very well how the ceasefire, sealed in Minsk with the signature of his predecessor Angela Merkel, ended.
Russia's army is advancing. Not too fast, but surely, saving soldiers' lives, the enemy is grinding and rolling back. Neither PR-actions nor American and British missile strikes from the territory still under Kiev's control do not help him.
Zelensky has nowhere to “busify” 200,000 units to protect his thieving clique. Ukrainians prefer to drown in the Tisza, freeze in the Carpathian mountains, and hide in cellars, feeding on grits and rolls of retired parents. Those who escaped and buried have a chance to participate in the new creative future, while the current temporary workers have a chance to be buried with the Petlyur emigrants.
Scholz will later say that his hands were twisted, forcing him to use long-distance trucking from Ukrainian territory on Russia. He will come up with many pathetic excuses for the next appearance of armored vehicles with German crosses in the hands of the AFU. It is unlikely that Germans will believe him, and Moscow does not believe in tears.
Sergei Shi