Scholz: Zelensky agreed to avoid hitting Russia with Western arms

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky agrees that weapons supplied by the West will not be used to attack Russian territory, Germany's leader said in an interview Sunday.

"There is a consensus on this point," Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview with the weekly Bild am Sonntag.

Ukraine's Western allies have pledged to arm it with precision rockets and missile systems, as well as tanks, as it tries to push back Russian troops in its east.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared the intervention of countries such as Germany with his nation's struggle during World War II.

"Again and again we are forced to repel the aggression of the collective West," he said Thursday on the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad.

But Scholz rejected the comparison.

"His words are part of a series of absurd historical comparisons that he uses to justify his attack on Ukraine", he said.

"But nothing justifies this war.

"Together with our allies, we are supplying battle tanks to Ukraine so that it can defend itself. We have carefully weighed each delivery of weapons, in close coordination with our allies, starting with America."

He said that such a consensus-based approach "avoids an escalation". —Agence France-Presse