The two politicians were only really driven to current statements by critical Ukrainian voices – the country’s ambassador in Berlin and President Volodomir Selenski spoke out. The difference: the social democrat has regrets, the CDU politician has no regrets. Steinmeier’s reminiscences sound like an ear confession among journalists. For example: “My adherence to Nord Stream 2 was clearly a mistake. We held on to bridges that Russia no longer believed in and that our partners warned us about.”
Or: “We have failed in establishing a common European house that includes Russia.” He thought that Putin would not accept the ruin of his country for his imperial madness: “I, like others, wrong.”
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With a Russia under Putin, there will be “no return to the status quo before the war,” said Steinmeier, adding that he sympathized with the people in Ukraine.
If the re-election as Federal President had been scheduled for April and not February, eleven days before the invasion, Steinmeier would have had to tremble a little more about his second term.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel was not enough for a press conference and honest reflection. In response to Zelensky’s accusations that NATO prevented Ukraine from joining in 2008 due to the “absurd fear of some politicians” of Russia and that the result could be seen in Bucha, Merkel only had a spokeswoman say in the jargon of the insurance company’s rejection of a claim for damages: “Chancellor former Dr. Angela Merkel stands by her decisions in connection with the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest.”
In view of the atrocities, all efforts to “put an end to the barbarism and the war in Russia against Ukraine have the full support of the former Chancellor”. Those trapped in Mariupol will have been waiting for this full support.
The new sanctions that the EU Commission is preparing according to our information have a completely different effect. A Europe-wide ban on imports of Russian hard coal is being discussed – the eternal “Njet” faction of the German government and industry would have broken up. As early as tomorrow, Wednesday, the EU Commission could come up with the coal compromise. Germany wanted to let the deliveries of the “black gold” expire by the summer anyway.
Shocked by the Bucha pictures, France announced that it would cut off coal and oil supplies from Russia altogether. And even Italy, which is very dependent on Russian gas, does not want to block sanctions decisions. We remember a militant sentence: “Where law becomes wrong, resistance becomes a duty.”
It is again the two previous leaders of the Greens who are showing their profile in this “mixed” cabinet. Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock doesn’t hesitate and expels 40 Russian diplomats, move in five days at the latest, please. These are declared “undesirables” because they are suspected of being better spies than in the official role of diplomats. “Here in Germany, they worked every day against our freedom, against the cohesion of our society,” believes Baerbock. The Russian embassy denies this and points to a “further deterioration in German-Russian relations”.
Finally, Robert Habeck, the “war economy minister” (“Spiegel”), conceded a sacred good of the market economy to Putin’s rogue state: private property. For the first time, he uses the special paragraph 6 in the foreign trade law to bring a company controlled by foreigners under German control.
In this way, Habeck puts Gazprom Germania, the offshoot of the state monopoly Gazprom, under the trusteeship of the Federal Network Agency to ensure the supply of natural gas. Large gas storage facilities belong to the expropriated property. With this daring action, the minister anticipates a liquidation carried out by the Russians. Gazprom had already sold its German business to Gazprom Export Business Services LLC, which in turn quickly ceded all of the voting shares in a “Joint Stock Company Palmary”.
Conclusion: Even an economic war can be very dirty.
(Photo: IMAGO/Future Image)
As is well known, the otherwise somewhat hypothermic Olaf Scholz quickly gets to a higher operating temperature when he is dealing with professors from the USA, Munich or elsewhere who want to convince him of the feasibility of a total energy embargo against Moscow. The Chancellor considers this to be irresponsible modeling work, i.e. fretwork in the marble factory. Veronika Grimm does not want to let the harsh criticism sit on her. In the Handelsblatt interview, the respected economist says that…
- … there are “economic, security policy and ethical arguments” for an embargo, and some would also consider it necessary “in order not to endanger Germany’s reputation among the alliance partners”;
- … it is unnecessary to “wipe scientific models off the table and denigrate them as wrong”, but it is sufficient to explain the reasons for decisions based on the facts;
- … meanwhile a series of independent studies have come to the conclusion that a total exit from Russian energy is indeed a huge challenge, but “feasible”.
“It is not the economy, stupid”, it is the war. Only without war is the balance correct. If you don’t believe it, you can listen to Edwin Starr’s “War”: “It ain’t nothing but a heart-breaker (War) / It’s got one friend that’s the undertaker…/ Life is much too short and precious / To spend fighting wars each day / War can’t give life / It can only take it away.”
In the last few weeks I have looked again and again in the volume “Ukraine Series” by the well-known photographer Johanna Diehl. In 2013 she documented derelict or misused synagogues in Ukraine – and showed what two dictatorships (Nazi and Soviet) did to expelling Jewish communities. “You are wrong. It is not the ruins of a synagogue. It is our ruin, it is we who are sinking,” writes the Ukrainian poet Yuri Andrukhovych. There is nothing more to say about the current situation.
After the Bucha horror, many are calling for an immediate halt to Russian gas. Federal Minister of Economics Habeck does not want that. He is counting on time to find new sources of energy. We are interested in your opinion: Should Germany immediately introduce a gas embargo? Does “Freeze for Peace” make sense? Do you think there is a quick alternative? Write us your opinion in five sentences [email protected] . We will publish selected articles with attribution on Thursday in print and online.
At first he wanted to do it like Donald Trump: simply build a social media platform. Then Elon Musk, 50, speaker of the digital economy, apparently remembered in time that – unlike Trump – he is not blocked on Twitter. And so the head of Tesla and SpaceX bought a 9.2 percent stake in the short message service for almost three billion dollars.
Musk, number one on the relevant rich lists, has more than 80 million followers himself, some of whom probably bought Twitter shares out of sheer love. The course then shot up more than 22 percent.
And then there’s the “twelfth man”, one of those football phenomena that becomes the talk of the day like the snowstorm just before Easter. The “twelfth man” is metaphorically an audience that drives his team – like in Freiburg on Saturday, when the stadium, freed from the ice of the pandemic, was full again for the first time. However, the opponent, the big FC Bayern Munich, actually had a twelfth man on the pitch for 20 seconds shortly before the end because there had been a mistake in substitution.
The lapse did not change the clear 4:1 of the guests, but such games have already been counted as lost for those who made mistakes. After some hesitation, the always fair SC Freiburg protested. But we cheer ourselves up with Albert Einstein at the end: “If I had foreseen the consequences, I would have become a watchmaker.”
I wish you a lively day, without change, stock and other errors.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs