German media mulls claims Scholz’s visit to China prevented Russia’s nuclear strike on Ukraine

Western media, including German, reported that in 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in Beijing and helped convince Chinese leader Xi Jinping to influence Putin not to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
But Bild publication disagrees with such statements.
Earlier, the leader of the SPD faction in the Bundestag, Rolf Mützenich, said that Ukraine and the rest of Europe should thank Scholz, as his visit helped prevent a possible Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine on Putin's orders.
However, Bild notes that its columnist Philipp Pyatov casts doubt on this and recalls that earlier, the US media had written that in the autumn of 2022, the US feared a nuclear strike by Russia against Ukraine. China was involved in preventing it. After Olaf Scholz's visit to Beijing, the Chinese authorities called for the non-use of nuclear weapons.
As early as 2022, the American media wrote that Scholz's role in Beijing was minimal and that he only passed on information from Washington. In response to BILD's request, the Chancellor's office quoted his words from November 2022 after a meeting with Xi Jinping: "In Beijing, I asked President Xi to use his influence on Russia."
"On the one hand, the Americans threatened the Russian Federation. On the other hand, and the Chancellor was involved in this, we managed to get China and India to sign a declaration in which they spoke out against the use of nuclear weapons in general and in Ukraine in particular. Olaf Scholz certainly contributed to the change in China's position. But in any case, Scholz did not prevent a nuclear war, as there were no signs that a nuclear strike was imminent," military expert Carlo Masala, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, told BILD.
Earlier, reported that "if the Russian president believes that it is enough for him to just sit out this war, and we will weaken our support, then he miscalculated." Also, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the creation of a long-range rocket artillery coalition for Ukraine.
And the Bundestag reported that Scholz would eventually provide Ukraine with Taurus missiles.