The moral pressure of desperation that the Russian war atrocities generate in this country leads to cracks in the German governing coalition.

Demands for faster and heavier arms deliveries are growing in proportion to the dismay at the images of the war.

The loudest is not the opposition, on the contrary.

Michael Roth, Anton Hofreiter and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, three experienced and respected parliamentarians from the governing parties SPD, Greens and FDP, can hardly contain their anger after a trip to western Ukraine.

In doing so, they are passing on the desperation and the hope for German help that they experienced themselves in Lemberg.

Your addressee is the Federal Chancellor.

The situation in the Donbass requires further aid

Three days after the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine, Olaf Scholz used the concept of a turning point in security policy for his reversal.

Now it is increasingly becoming a burden for him to live up to this claim.

The deliveries of anti-tank and anti-aircraft hand-held weapons that were announced at the time have taken place, and more such material is on its way to Ukraine.

But the dynamics of the war and the fear of the imminent Russian offensive in the Donbass now require other, more extensive defense aid.

The federal government is stuck in an increasingly tangled web of defensive arguments as to why it can't deliver faster, more, or heavier things.

First of all, Germany in particular does not want to be a pioneer here.

The image of the "convoy" is used, in which the Federal Republic wants to keep side by side with the other NATO countries.

Indeed, no country other than the Czech Republic and Great Britain has significantly expanded its arms assistance to include heavy equipment.

However, in the past week NATO has extended the framework for possible armament aid: tanks are now also defensive weapons, according to the NATO Secretary General after a round of consultations with the foreign ministers of the alliance.

Will NATO become a war party after all?

Second, the complexity of delivery and use increases with the size of the device.

Training is needed to familiarize Ukrainian soldiers with Western tanks and guns.

Where should they take place?

In the NATO countries?

Doesn't that finally make the West a war party?

Or in Ukraine?

Doesn't that expose Western instructors to Russian fire?

With what consequences?

Deliveries of old equipment from the times of the Warsaw Pact, which are still in use in Eastern European NATO countries and which would then have to be replaced by Western weapons, could take place more quickly.

It is said that this method will be pursued.

But the stocks of old equipment there are no longer very large.

Thirdly, the federal government is stuck in a confusion of responsibilities: Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht from the SPD is responsible for arms sales from Bundeswehr stocks, while the Greens' Minister for Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck, has to approve arms deliveries from German armaments companies.

All armaments must also receive approval from the Federal Security Council, which is headed by the Chancellery and in which other ministries are represented, such as the Foreign Office.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who is also Green, has repeatedly tried to tug and pull at the tough tangle of defensive arguments and awkwardness by making her impatience public.

That had little effect.

Now leading MPs from the governing parties are appearing with even louder anger.

In the end, the resentment is aimed at the chancellor himself. Olaf Scholz runs the risk of disappointing expectations of his "turning point".

It is true that he keeps repeating his goals in times of war: one thing is to do everything possible to ensure that Putin does not win.

A second statement reads that NATO will not become a party to the war.

But Scholz does not fill the tension that lies between these two goals.

The fact that his own government partners are more dissatisfied than the opposition parties will shape the chancellor's image in the coalition.