Chile has become the latest country to publicly reject Western pressure to feed the war in Ukraine. On November 24, Chilean Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren confirmed what the country’s political class has been discussing for months: Chilean law prohibits the transfer of arms to any country engaged in active armed conflict, even Ukraine. Klaveren’s statement seemingly left open the possibility of a “ring-exchange” scheme, in which a Ukraine-friendly nation would buy the equipment and then transfer similar equipment of its own to Kyiv. But the crucial point would be that it would be that country’s equipment—not Chile’s—going to war.

Klaveren didn’t use diplomatic gymnastics or hedged language. He flatly denied that Santiago had ever agreed to supply Marder 1A3 Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) to Germany for eventual use in Ukraine. Under Chilean law (and its longstanding neutrality policy), such a transfer would be, in his own words, “impossible to imagine.”

Klaveren made no comment on whether or not Santiago was open to selling the Marders to Germany for its own use, but stressed that there was no conceivable way these vehicles would end up in the battlefields of eastern Ukraine.

This comes as a setback for the West. For weeks, pro-Ukraine media outlets pushed breathless stories claiming that Chile had secretly approved sending 30 of its Marder 1A3s to Germany—where they would be refurbished, repainted, and quietly shipped to Ukraine. It was presented as a done deal—another “ring-exchange” workaround to Chile’s laws. But Chile isn’t playing along.

Chile’s position isn’t an obscure legal technicality. It reflects a deeper reality: much of the Global South has

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