Good morning, dear readers,
how is this conflict supposed to end? That is the one question that all Germans can gather around today, on the threshold of the second year of the war. It doesn’t matter whether they tend to include Sahra Wagenknecht or Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann in their night prayers.
I don’t have an answer to this question, just a guess: when the guns finally fall silent, it will be based on a compromise that both sides – Moscow and Kiev – find equally unsatisfactory.
On the one hand, I don’t see how Ukraine’s declared war goal, the military liberation of Crimea, is to become a reality. On the other hand, I also do not see how the West and Ukraine could agree to a ceasefire in which Moscow retains control of the annexed territories in eastern Ukraine. Most likely, therefore, there will be a ceasefire at some point, after which both sides will continue to assert territorial claims against each other.
The good news is that, given the right general political climate, such provisional arrangements can last for decades and result in a lasting peace solution. At the Oder-Neisse border, it took 43 years until Germany gave up its territorial claims against Poland in 1992.
(Photo: IMAGO/photothek)
The sad anniversary of the Russian march on Kiev concerns us in several ways today in the Handelsblatt.
- We report on the new resolution against the Russian invasion that the UN General Assembly in New York passed yesterday. The resolution is not binding, so the question of whether the front of the Russia opponents will close or whether it will crumble is more interesting.
The answer according to the UN vote: neither. With 141 states, as many UN members voted for this resolution as for a similar one from last March. Including again Brazil, which was last seen as an insecure cantonist.
The number of no votes has risen slightly to seven, although these are not the mainstays of the western community of values, but rather Russia, Belarus, Syria, Nicaragua, Eritrea, Mali and North Korea.
The biggest problem from a Western perspective: China, India and South Africa, three important G20 countries again abstained yesterday.
- In his haunting report, foreign reporter Mathias Brüggmann describes Ukraine as a strangely divided country: Every day around 100 people are killed on the front in the east, constant fear of Russian air raids in the capital Kiev – and a party atmosphere in western Ukrainian Lviv, formerly Lemberg. If the men from this region weren’t also called up, if it weren’t for the power cuts and the curfew at night: the war would have felt much further away in Lviv than the 1,200 kilometers to the front.
- Using twelve graphics, we analyze how the “turning point” proclaimed by Olaf Scholz immediately after the beginning of the war had an impact in practice – from rising share prices for armaments companies, a far-reaching withdrawal of German companies from Russia to the reversal in German gas imports.
But I was particularly impressed by this graphic about the Ukrainian refugees abroad:
The exciting question is: How many of the Ukrainians in Russia are staying there voluntarily? How many did not know any other way out of the war or were even deported to Russia?
The US government plans to announce new sanctions against Russia this Friday. This was announced by White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday. The sanctions should therefore also target third countries, which the US government believes will help to circumvent sanctions against Russia.
China may be one of these supporters to a greater extent than previously thought. According to a report by “Spiegel”, a Chinese company and Moscow are said to be negotiating the purchase of 100 drones. These could therefore be delivered by April and would also be able to carry warheads. Accordingly, the Russian military and the Chinese drone manufacturer Xi’an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology are to negotiate about the mass production of such kamikaze drones for Russia.
(Photo: AP)
US President Joe Biden has nominated former Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga as a candidate to run the World Bank. He is “uniquely suited to lead the World Bank at this pivotal moment in history,” Biden said, according to a White House statement on Thursday. Traditionally, the USA provides the head of the development and promotional bank, which belongs to the United Nations.
Small blemish: shortly before Banga’s nomination, according to the Financial Times, the board of directors of the World Bank had come out in favor of filling the top post with a woman. But this call must have faded away in the few hundred meters between the World Bank headquarters in Washington and the White House.
Banga is “a complete Made in India type”, as the Indian-American once said about himself. The 63-year-old currently works for the financial investor General Atlantic.
Last week, former World Bank boss David Malpass surprisingly announced his resignation. Malpass will resign at the end of the fiscal year at the end of June, the development bank announced on Wednesday.
And then there are the fake Hitler diaries that Stern published in 1983. What was tragic for the journalists and publishing managers involved was extremely amusing for the rest of the republic at the time. The great Helmut Dietl captured the rampant Hitler mania wonderfully in his film comedy “Schtonk!”.
NDR has now put a critically annotated edition of the supposed diaries online, and a first reading of the 60 volumes revealed: Yes, there is all the history clutter that “Schtonk!” scoffs at, including the legendary sentence “Eva said also, I smell very strongly from the mouth again, also comes from the stomach”.
I wish you a day when nothing comes from the stomach.
Best regards
Your Christian Rickens
Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt
hp: With this issue of the Morning Briefing, I say goodbye for a few weeks’ vacation. My colleague Teresa Stiens welcomes you on Monday in the usual manner and at the usual hour.
