Kyiv, Berlin CDU leader Friedrich Merz met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv for a one-hour talk. However, he did not want to say anything publicly about the content, but rather first inform Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). Merz first found out about the fighting there in the past few weeks in Irpin near the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday.
The opposition leader paid “every respect” and “great appreciation” to the Ukrainian armed forces for their fight against the Russian invasion, he said on the Welt channel. “I think we in Germany are still obliged to continue to help this country and to help a city like Irpin with the reconstruction.”
After a conversation with Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, Merz said on Tuesday evening: “I was really completely shaken here, I still am, these pictures can’t get out of my head.”
In Irpin he saw that cultural centers, kindergartens and hospitals had also been hit and how the war was also directed against the civilian population. “You can’t just see something like that on television alone, you have to see it to grasp the whole tragedy of such attacks,” said the CDU leader.
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He reiterated his support for arms sales to Ukraine. “I feel very much confirmed in the decision we made in the German Bundestag last week that we are helping this country,” said Merz. For this he experienced the gratitude of his interlocutors. He also supported EU accession status for Ukraine.
Merz had traveled to Ukraine in a sleeping car. “One night in a sleeping car on the way to Kyiv,” the 66-year-old had previously written on the short message service Twitter and shared a 17-second video. From the train, Merz posted: “We have an interesting journey ahead of us and so far I can only say: everything is safe, everything is good and the Ukrainian authorities are extremely cooperative. Very pleasant people. It’s nice to be in this country.”
CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja said on Deutschlandfunk that Kyiv should be about the promise of German arms deliveries made in the Bundestag. “On the other hand, of course, it’s also about showing solidarity and taking things with you that are now important for Ukraine and for the defense of the Ukrainian people.”
“You can’t get these pictures out of your head,” said the CDU leader during his visit to the suburb of Irpin
(Photo: dpa)
Czaja rejected classifications that the visit could be an election campaign maneuver in view of the upcoming state elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia. “It really has nothing to do with the upcoming state election campaigns,” he said. Merz had already planned the trip on February 22, but the war intervened.
The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael Roth, warned against taking such a trip for partisan reasons. “It’s good if German politicians also travel to Ukraine,” the SPD politician told the editorial network Germany. “But they must have good reasons for doing so. A bad reason is to take a domestic dispute to Ukraine and want to make a name for yourself there in party politics. That is not appropriate to the drama of the war.”
Scholz: “I approve of that”
There had already been a discussion about the opposition leader’s travel plans – and about Chancellor Scholz’s position on the subject. On ZDF he said he had no objections to Merz’s trip. “I approve of that.” At the same time, the Chancellor made it clear that the fact that Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was uninvited through Ukraine in mid-April would stand in the way of his own trip to Kyiv.
The Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk criticized this drastically: “Playing an insulted liverwurst doesn’t sound very statesmanlike.” It’s about the most brutal war of annihilation since the Nazi attack on Ukraine, “it’s not a kindergarten,” Melnyk told the German Press Agency . Merz said on Tuesday evening: “I think we should try rhetorically to get to a level where we don’t make mutual help unnecessarily difficult.”
At the same time, Melnyk emphasized that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would continue to be happy to receive Scholz in Kyiv.
Steinmeier’s planned visit fell through in mid-April because the Ukrainian side uninvited him. He has been criticized in Ukraine for his Russia policy as a former foreign minister.
The chair of the defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), asked Melnyk to apologize to the Federal President. Ukraine had unloaded Steinmeier and could not wait for Chancellor Scholz to travel to Kyiv, she told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “Perhaps, dear Mr. Melnyk, one should simply apologize to the President and then politely invite the Chancellor to come.”
AfD faction leader Tino Chrupalla called for consequences after Melnyk’s statement. “Such provocations and insults by constitutional bodies should not be accepted without doing anything. The federal government must summon Ambassador Melnyk immediately,” he told dpa. If Melnyk shows himself to be unreasonable, the government must insist that he be recalled immediately.
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