There are various interpretations about the bevhaviour of Scholz and the SPD on the issue of shipping heavy weapons. Like almost everything, you can of course pin it on Russian kompromat, but the real reasons are likely much more mundane. For me, it's most likely a combination of: Having a number of critical state elections that the SPD wants to win in the coming months, where they don't want to risk having their party base and aging electorate run scared with talks of German Panzers