Thursday, March 28

Scholz admits before the German Parliament that he still cannot specify military support for Ukraine


At the end of the NATO summit in Madrid, during the press conference that the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, he maintained with journalists, they asked him the following question: “Could the chancellor explain what the security and financing guarantees promised by Germany for Ukraine during this summit really consist of?” Showing off a mixture of arrogance and Hanseatic humour, Scholz simply replied: ‘yes i could». And when the silence after those words made it clear that the journalists expected him to develop those two words, he only added: “That’s all.” At that time, there was still a question as to whether he did not set out more concretely the commitments reached at the summit due to strategic reasons. After all, we are talking about a war.

But the control session before the plenary session of the German Parliament, in which Scholz has had to account for these commitments, reveals that what really happened is that he lacked an answer. To questions from the opposition, the German chancellor has been forced to admit that the security guarantees promised to Ukraine by Germany can’t be staged yet because its design must still be discussed between the partners of the ‘traffic light coalition’, in which it governs with Greens and Liberals (FDP) and also with Ukraine itself.

As expected, the opposition has not been satisfied with that response either. Jurgen Hardt, from Merkel’s conservative CDU, has touched on the question of why the tanks that must be delivered to Ukraine as a result of previous commitments are still not being sent to kyiv, stuck in weapons factories. “Who is holding back that shipment that is crucial for the defense of Ukraine and for the geostrategic future of all of Europe?”, he questioned, to which Scholz limited himself to answering what we already knew, that several heavy weapons have already been delivered, such as the flag-panzer or the kobra radar. “We will continue along this same line and, at the same time, we are in close contact with our partners,” he said, suggesting that any step that is taken will be agreed upon beforehand with NATO and the EU, “there are no solo efforts on this issue ».

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The questions have insisted on the government’s ‘traffic light’ plans and the most they have managed to obtain is some clue about the fact that “there are several deliveries through third parties prepared” and Scholz’s determination not to place Germany at the forefront of arms deliveries to Ukraine. “It is a leadership decision that we have taken.”

Solidarity with Kyiv

At the most tense moment of the parliamentary session, Steffen Kotré, deputy for Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party located to the right of the CDU, has addressed the chancellor saying that “the high prices of energy and raw materials are not directly related to the war in Ukraine, but to the policy of scarcity that has been practiced the German Government”, and asked: “Can you explain to us how the Government has come to make such an unrealistic policy?” Here Scholz has raised the tone and has said that “my answer is quite clear: what you say is what is very far from reality. You do not take note of the fact that there really is a war, that Russia attacked before, that countless people are dying (…) that this is a terrible and brutal war and that the correct response is solidarity with Ukraine. The effects in Germany, such as the aforementioned price explosion, have to do with this solidarity. If a court of law examined your proposal and your position, it would look very bad for you (…) I am firmly convinced that the AfD is not only a right-wing populist party, but also a party of Russia».

The parliamentary debate has made it clear that Germany intends to continue handing over arms to Ukraine, that the presence of its soldiers in Lithuania leads the government to maintain extremely conservative positions, avoiding a direct confrontation with Putin, and that royal military support will continue to lag well behind diplomatic support. One of the main trump cards to continue maintaining this position is the withdrawal by Ukraine of its belligerent ambassador in Berlin, Andrij Melnik, who has been drawing colors from the German government for months with their public denunciations of inaction and empty compromises. The German Foreign Ministry had put pressure on kyiv in this regard and it is no secret that the news of his transfer was celebrated. However, Zelensky has shown sagacity, yielding to that pressure at a key moment in the negotiation of the delivery of the first heavy weapons, but promoting Melnik to the number two position in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, from where he will be able to exert even more influence over relations with Germany.


www.abc.es

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