Russia invadedUkraine on Thursday and explosions were later heard in several major cities.Germany 's current army chief and ex-defense minister have sharply criticized the country's response.
Current and former German defense officials are publicly shaming the country's weak response to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine Thursday, and explosions were subsequently heard across several Ukrainian cities.
Last month Germany was widely criticized for offering no military aid to Ukraine despite repeated pleas from Kyiv, all while Putin amassed more than 150,000 troops at the Ukrainian border.
Germany eventually scrapped plans for the Nord Stream II pipeline project it was pursuing with Russia after Putin ordered troops into two pro-Kremlin regions of Ukraine on Monday, a positive move in the eyes of Ukraine.
However, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, German defense leaders slammed the country's military response online.
Alfons Mais, the head of the German army, said in an honest and transparent LinkedIn post early Thursday that his country doesn't have the military might to support Ukraine that it should.
"In my 41th year of peace-time service, I would not have thought that I would have to experience a war," Mais wrote.
"And the Bundeswehr, the army which I have the honor to command, is standing there more or less empty-handed. The options we can offer the government in support of the alliance are extremely limited."
Striking a similar tone, Germany's former defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer tweeted Thursday that Germany had not stepped up to the plate.
"I'm so angry at ourselves for our historical failure. After Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin," she wrote, citing places Russia has invaded or sent troops in the past.
"We have forgotten the lesson ... that negotiation always comes first, but we have to be militarily strong enough to make non-negotiation not an option for the other side."
Around 1,000 German soldiers have been sent to Lithuania, which borders Russia-aligned Belarus, as part of the NATO response to Putin's aggression, but Ukraine has expressed frustration at Germany's lack of action.
"The list of defensive weapons that we expect from Germany has been on the table of the minister of defense since February 3 and we hope that at least today we will get an honest answer to this request," Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, told ZDF on Thursday morning.
Germany's current defense minister Christine Lambrecht said during the Munich Security Conference earlier this month that the German army was stretched to its limits and struggling with equipment problems.
Interior minister Nancy Faeser said Thursday that Germany would offer "massive support" to eastern European nations like Poland to help deal with people fleeing from Ukraine.
How did we get to an invasion?
Russia's conflict with Ukraine has been rumbling for years but escalated dramatically in recent weeks.
Russia assembled vast numbers of troops around Ukraine — as many as 190,000, per US estimates — in the largest military operation in the region since World War II.
On Monday, Putin recognized the claims to independence of the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk areas of Ukraine, ordering troops there for what he described as a limited peace-keeping operation in the east of the country.
Less than 72 hours later, Putin authorized a full-scale attack on Ukraine. In the hours that followed, explosions pounded cities around Ukraine, many hundreds of miles from the previous conflict zone.
Ukrainian officials reported fighting on its borders with Russia, and dozens of casualties.
The new wave of hostilities expanded the clash from a limited incursion over disputed land into the most serious armed conflict in Europe for at least a decade.
Insider's live blog of the invasion is covering developments as they happen.