A member of the Bundestag from the CDU calls for the expulsion of the Ukrainian ambassador from Germany. He hits back and demands a word of power from the CDU chairman. One could think of this as one of the usual scuffles that Andriy Melnyk is involved in. But this time it’s different.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz says his government will support Ukraine for as long as necessary. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says the war in Ukraine could last for years. The conclusion is obvious: the federal government does not expect peace. She doesn’t even count on negotiations for a peace.
And she is currently correct. Neither the Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelenskij nor the Russian President Vladimir Putin are aiming for peace negotiations. Putin, his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his predecessor Medvedev have repeatedly confirmed Russia’s war aims, which aim to eliminate Ukraine as a state with its own Ukrainian, pro-Western identity. The war in Ukraine currently looks like the First World War: a trench warfare. In any case, the bottom line: no prospect of peace.
Back to Germany. The war in Ukraine produces scary news almost every day, which always has only one message: Prosperity is in danger, and it is not only the lower class that is affected by immense price increases at discounters and rents, but also the middle class. Which not only leads to the question of whether there will be “popular uprisings”, as Baerbock boldly put it. But also how long German support for Ukraine lasts.
And one thing can be said: if pro-Ukraine politics collapses anywhere in Germany, it will be in the east of the country. And in Saxony. A widespread mood there can perhaps be summarized as follows: 30 years ago we lost everything and had to completely rebuild. We don’t want to lose everything we’ve built and have to start all over again. Not for a conflict that is not our conflict.
And the Saxon head of government gives this mood a voice. That’s why he’s calling for negotiations, that’s why he’s asking for this war to be “frozen.” Michael Kretschmer has no suggestions as to how this could work, no wonder – they simply don’t exist. But that is not decisive, the decisive factor for a prime minister is the mood in his state. Kretschmer surfs the wave before it turns into a tsunami.
That is the background to the open conflict between the ambassador and the prime minister and the CDU member of the Bundestag and the CDU chairman. There has never been an ambassador in the history of diplomacy who was so loud and who attacked his host country in such a way. No one had ever experienced that someone from abroad spoke to the Germans in such a penetrating and blunt manner.
Only a few hours ago, in his reaction to a comment in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung – headline: “A sorry from Kyiv for this ambassador would be helpful” – Melnyk let it be known how he assesses the role of the Germans in the Ukraine war: “It would be more appropriate Some German politicians (gender form: Melnyk) apologize to the Ukrainians for not preventing this barbaric Russian war of annihilation, but enabling it in the first place.”
What is meant is that Germany made the Ukraine war possible in the first place by currying favor with Russia (“Change through Trade”, Nord Stream 2). A maximum provocation, but which carries a kernel of truth. In any case, it is sensitive to the German understanding of politics and history.
When the Süddeutsche Zeitung commented that Melnyk was contributing to “solidarity with someone who understands Putin” by disinviting the Prime Minister of Saxony, and that it would have been better to take Michael Kretschmer to the horrors of Butscha and Irpin in the Ukraine, Melnyk countered: Unfortunately Kretschmer is a “lost case. No visit to Butscha or Irpin would help the Saxon Prime Minister and the CDU deputy party leader to take off his rose-colored glasses. no chance Unfortunately.”
Whoever is now calling for peace, for “negotiations”, for “freezing” the war is playing into the hands of the aggressor Putin. At least that’s how Melnyk sees it, and that’s how his top boss, President Selensky, sees it too. It is correct that if negotiations were to take place now, it would result in a “dictated peace” which the Federal Chancellor wants to prevent.
It is also true that a “frozen war” is not a solution, but only a fragile state of aggregation. This can be studied in Moldova and in Georgia and Serbia, where Putin has the power to “unfreeze” “frozen” conflicts at any time. Studies in Transnistria, Abkhazia, Ossetia and Kosovo show that the absence of war does not mean one thing: peace.
Germany and France are opposed to an EU entry ban for Russian citizens. As has now become public, Russia has picked up combat drones in Iran for use in Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian army, Russia is suffering heavy losses in southern Ukraine.
In Russian Portovaya near Nord Stream 1, Russia burns its surplus gas. Gazprom is said to burn off around 4.3 million cubic meters of the raw material every day. According to a gas expert, this could be a reaction born of necessity – or a propaganda message.
The video of little Liza, who died in a Russian missile attack, went around the world. Now her mother speaks. “What Russia took from me is unforgivable,” she says. And: “Liza was my life.”
