The chancellor stands in front of the tank and the instructor says: "May I introduce the cheetah." Scholz nods and listens to a few facts about the anti-aircraft tank, with its twin cannons, caliber 35 millimeters, and 320 rounds each board.

"We can take out a lot of targets with it," says the trainer.

Matthias Wysuwa

Political correspondent for northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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A small ladder is provided, the Chancellor climbs onto the Cheetah and in through the hatch.

The tank hums, the radar dish spins, and the cannons bob up and down.

While the chancellor is being shown everything, there is always a brief bang from afar.

They are cheetahs that are actually being trained to shoot at targets in the air.

Ukrainians are in the tanks.

The Chancellor wants to show that progress is being made

Olaf Scholz came to the Putlos military training area in Schleswig-Holstein on Thursday.

Not just to climb into a cheetah, but to see for yourself how Ukrainians are trained to use one in war.

The old cheetah is one of the weapons that Germany has promised Ukraine to use in its fight against the Russian invaders, and has even delivered several of them.

The Chancellor's visit should also show that progress is being made.

After all, one could not always get that impression from the German arms deliveries.

But with guns comes knowledge of how to use them, and that's where it gets complicated.

The training of the Ukrainian soldiers on the cheetahs is part of a puzzle.

Roughly speaking, Germany tries to train Ukrainians on any equipment that is shipped to the war zone and that is not yet known in the Ukrainian armed forces.

In the case of the heavy weapons systems used in the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr is largely responsible for this itself. They are needed so that Ukraine can attack targets far behind the front lines, such as enemy artillery positions, ammunition depots or bridges.

Since mid-May, Ukrainian soldiers have been learning at the artillery school in Idar-Oberstein and at the adjacent military training areas in the south-west of the republic how to use the army's powerful barreled weapons and rocket launchers and how to use them in combat.

According to information from the Ministry of Defense to the FAZ, a second contingent of Ukrainian operating teams for the Panzerhaubitze 2000 is currently being trained there.

A first round with around one hundred soldiers went through the training in Idar-Oberstein from May 11 to June 19.

These are said to have been essentially combat-experienced troops who were familiar with the Soviet systems of the Ukrainian army.

The training in Germany, according to a spokesman on Thursday, was a "complete package".

The soldiers would have learned to operate the gun, to drive it, to repair it - and finally to fight targets in a combination of several guns using the fire control system.

The Ministry does not provide any information on the current number of soldiers being trained on the tank howitzer in Germany.

From army circles it is said that the number is in the range of “a few dozen”.

A similar number is also given for the MARS II rocket launcher, several of which, like the self-propelled howitzer, have now arrived in Ukraine and on which Ukrainian soldiers were also trained for four weeks in Idar-Oberstein in July.

At the end of July, the Ministry of Defense also announced that Ukrainian soldiers had been trained on HEP70 decontamination systems in order to be able to sterilize, decontaminate and detoxify people.

The ministry did not provide any information about the duration of the training and the number of soldiers.