What does Germany have to say against Putin?
(Photo: imago images/Rüdiger Wölk)
The Ukrainian President was on Thursday as EU leaders in Brussels discussed Russia’s war of aggression and Europe’s response. Once again, Volodymyr Zelensky expressed Ukraine’s urgent request to be allowed to join the European Union. And again he got only evasive answers. “This could be the last time you see me alive,” he is said to have said in parting.
Europe in February 2022: Russian bombs are falling in Kiev, sanctions are being haggled in Brussels. Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi apparently had a particularly urgent concern. He wanted to make exceptions for luxury goods, an important branch of the Italian economy, in the sanctions package.
For Ukrainians it is a matter of life and death. Europe’s governments for particular interests. It’s embarrassing.
European diplomats can well explain why it would have been unwise to open accession talks with Ukraine given the tensions with Russia. Not even NATO, which, unlike the EU, understands the business of deterrence, was willing to give Ukraine concrete prospects of accession.
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There may be sound reasons for all of this, but the only conclusion that Ukrainians can draw is that Europe has failed us.
Germany’s role was particularly inglorious, mind you, for years. Berlin preferred to draft strategy papers on a hydrogen partnership rather than address Ukraine’s security needs.
While the Balts and Poles supplied Ukraine with weapons for self-defense, the federal ministries preferred to lecture about the fact that supplying weapons would not change anything about Russia’s supremacy and would only prolong a war.
Doing nothing is bad, German doing nothing is unbearable
Doing nothing in the face of aggression against a friendly country is bad enough. When doing nothing is accompanied by cynical lectures, it becomes unbearable.
In the meantime, it has become apparent that the Ukrainian troops are succeeding in inflicting casualties on the invading Russian army. With precisely those weapons whose delivery Germany considered counterproductive.
More on the Ukraine war:
What follows from this war, this historical caesura? The Federal Republic not only needs an increase in defense spending. Federal politics needs a basic understanding of military contexts. And while we’re at it, maybe the Germans should reconsider their contempt for American intelligence.
It was the Americans who saw through the Kremlin’s plans early on and sounded the alarm. The head of the Federal Intelligence Service, Bruno Kajl, on the other hand, was surprised by the Russian attack at appointments in Kiev and had to be evacuated. Germany makes a laughing stock of itself with such antics.
On Friday evening, Selenski spoke again with a mobile phone message. He stands in the open air in combat gear, surrounded by his closest advisers. They say that they are not hiding, that they will not flee Kiev: “We are defending our independence and our country.”
In Germany, on the same day, the news ticker reports that 5,000 helmets that Germany wants to bequeath to the Ukraine have now been loaded onto two trucks and are on their way to the Polish-Ukrainian border. There they are to be handed over to the Ukrainians. Of course on the Polish side. Better safe than sorry.
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