By Peter Dickinson
April 17, 2025
Atlantic Council
As Germany’s next chancellor Friedrich Merz prepares to boost support for Ukraine, the Kremlin is already seeking to deter him with intimidation tactics. Merz’s response to Moscow’s threats will reveal much about his ability to lead Europe at a time when the continent is attempting to confront the challenging new geopolitical realities of an expansionist Russia and an isolationist United States.
When Merz takes up his post in the coming weeks, his first big foreign policy decision will be whether to provide Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles. Current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has consistently refused to do so, but Merz has indicated that he will be prepared to give the green light for deliveries. This would potentially enable Ukraine to launch precision strikes against targets deep inside Russia.
The Kremlin is clearly anxious to prevent this from happening. Speaking in Moscow on April 17, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned that any decision to supply Ukraine with Taurus missiles would have serious consequences for Berlin, and would be viewed by Russia as direct German involvement in the war.
It is no surprise to see Russia engaged in yet more saber-rattling. After all, this approach has served the Kremlin well throughout the full-scale war in Ukraine. From the very first days of Russia’s invasion, Putin has attempted to exploit Western fears of escalation by threatening to retaliate if Kyiv’s partners dare to cross arbitrary red lines set by Moscow limiting the scale of international support for Ukraine.
Russia’s threats have proved remarkably effective. They have helped fuel prolonged debates in Western capitals over each and every aspect of military aid for Ukraine, and have made many of Kyiv’s partners reluctant to provide the kinds of weapons that could lead to a decisive Ukrainian victory. Indeed, while the Russian army has struggled to advance on the battlefield, Putin’s ability to intimidate the West has been arguably his most important achievement of the entire war.
This success is all the more remarkable given how many times Putin’s bluff has been called. He began the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by issuing thinly-veiled threats indicating that any Western attempts to interfere would be met by a nuclear response. When Western leaders ignored this and proceeded to arm Kyiv, Putin did nothing.
In September 2022, as he prepared to illegally annex four partially occupied regions of Ukraine, Putin famously announced his readiness to use nuclear weapons to defend his Ukrainian conquests. “I’m not bluffing,” he declared. When Ukraine completely disregarded this bluster
and proceeded to liberate the strategically vital southern city of Kherson days later, Putin did not reach for his nuclear button. On the contrary, he ordered his defeated army to quietly retreat across the Dnipro river.
The Kremlin’s many bloodcurdling threats regarding the sanctity of Russian-occupied Crimea have proved similarly hollow. Since 2022, Moscow has sought to position the occupied Ukrainian peninsula as being beyond the boundaries of the current war. This has not prevented Ukraine from sinking or damaging around one-third of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet, which has traditionally been based in Crimea. Putin has responded to this very personal humiliation in typically understated fashion by withdrawing the rest of his warships to the safety of Russia.
Remarkably, Putin even failed to react when Ukraine crossed the reddest of all red lines and invaded Russia itself in August 2024. Rather than declaring World War III or attempting to rally his compatriots against the foreign invader, Putin actively sought to downplay the significance of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s recent warnings regarding the potential delivery of German missiles to Ukraine are eerily similar to the empty threats made by Putin last September as the US weighed up the possibility of allowing Ukraine to conduct long-range strikes inside Russia using American weapons. At the time, Putin stated that any lifting of restrictions would mean that Russia was “at war” with NATO. However, when the US then duly granted Ukraine permission to begin attacking Russian targets, there was no discernible change in Putin’s stance.
Russia’s saber-rattling over Taurus missiles represents an important early test for Germany’s next leader. As Chancellor, Merz will inherit a major war on Europe’s eastern frontier that is now in its fourth year and could potentially expand further into the heart of the continent. He is also well aware that Europeans can no longer rely on US military support, as they have done for generations.
Germany is the obvious candidate to lead Europe’s rearmament, but Merz must first demonstrate that he has the political will to match his country’s undoubted industrial capabilities. US President Joe Biden consistently sought to avoid escalation with Russia, while his successor Donald Trump seems more interested in building bridges with Vladimir Putin than containing the Kremlin. If Merz wants to lead the Western resistance to Putin’s imperial agenda, he can begin by rejecting Russia’s threats and delivering Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.