Simplicius explains why the UK providing its Storm Shadow missile to Ukraine doesn’t pose the same danger to the UK that providing its Taurus missile would to Germany:
The majority of people, by the way, don’t actually understand the real reason behind Germany’s trepidation at sending the Taurus. It’s not that Germany is somehow more afraid to get involved, considering the fact they’re already the top aid provider besides the U.S.
It has more to do with the fact that, unlike the Storm Shadows, limited to under 250km for the export versions given Ukraine, the Taurus comes stock at well over 500km range, and is reportedly secretly capable of carrying nuclear warheads—a fact the Bundestag indirectly confirmed by declining to answer the question recently, stating it was ‘top secret information’.
That means the Taurus presents a totally different type of strategic threat if used against Russia. From the Russian standpoint, if a Taurus were to be launched into Russian territory, Russia would have no choice but to treat it as a potential nuclear first strike attack from NATO, given that Moscow is less than 500km from Ukrainian territory and there is no way to determine if the missile is nuclear-armed during its inbound flight. This opens up an entirely different can of worms, which would doctrinally give Russian armed forces the allowance to potentially respond to Germany in almost any escalatory measure, up to and including preventative nuclear launch on Berlin.
Germany knows this, which is why the Taurus is off the table.
The bizarre thing about the European leaders blathering in their helpless ineptitude about what they will and will not permit Russia to accomplish is the way in which they apparently fail to grasp that they have absolutely no say with regards to what Russia will do or will not do.
For all their blustering, for all their threats, for all their posturing, there is nothing, literally nothing, that all of the European countries combined can do about Odessa, or Kiev, or even Warsaw, for that matter. And they know this, which is why the only weapons that will be permitted to Ukraine are those that cannot even credibly threaten Russia, and the primary European objective is not winning an unwinnable war, but rather “to send Russia a signal of resolve and long-term commitment.”
I’m sure that signal will impress the field marshals of the Red Army about as much as it impresses us. It doesn’t say they are strong. It just says they are stupid and that the retardery of Clown World is relentless.