German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to make a government statement on the country's current security situation in the lower house of parliament on Thursday, days after he gave the green light for Ukraine to use German weapons to strike targets in Russia.
Scholz is expected to address both his decision to give Kiev more leeway in its use of German-supplied arms and a recent stabbing attack in the south-western city of Mannheim, in which a police officer was killed.
After long-held concerns about escalating the conflict with Russia and drawing Germany into the war, Scholz changed course on Ukraine policy last week to allow the government in Kiev to use German weapons to attack military targets on Russian territory, in particular to defend its second city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border.
The opposition then called on the German leader to explain his sudden reversal.
Left-wing politician Christian Görke said that he would have liked the chancellor to have made a statement last week "instead of announcing lonely decisions to expand the war in Ukraine."
Several other countries, including the United States, have recently made similar moves to give Ukraine more room for manoeuvre in its use of Western-supplied weapons, after previously specifying that they should only be used against targets within Ukraine itself.
Scholz had defended the change of course on Monday and emphasized: "We are certain that it will not contribute to an escalation, because - as the US president has also said - it is only a matter of being able to defend a major city like Kharkiv, for example." The decision was "carefully made" with Germany's friends and allies, Scholz said.
The chancellor is also likely to address the recent knife attack carried out by a 25-year-old Afghan national during an anti-Islam gathering in Mannheim, which sparked a domestic political debate about security and the threat of extremist violence.
Calls have since been growing for the government to again allow deportations to Afghanistan and Syria.