German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is facing growing criticism at home and abroad for his government's failure to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off Russian attacks, even as other Western allies step up shipments.

Scholz says Germany's own military stocks are too depleted to send any heavy battlefield weapons like tanks and howitzers, while those the German arms industry has said it could supply could not easily be put into use.

Critics, including among his junior coalition partners, accuse Scholz of being too timid, perhaps due to reticence in some sectors of his Social Democrats (SPD), which long advocated Western rapprochement with Russia.