Politicians and commentators in Berlin reacted with horror to remarks by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign policy adviser, who said the media should focus more on Germany’s future relations with Russia than on supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons.
Jens Plotner turned to accusations leveled at the German government by much of the media and the opposition that he had wavered in support of Ukraine and was much slower to supply it with heavy weapons from the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
Speaking at a debate in the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), he said the discussion on helping Ukraine was driven by “a fever that misses the big issues”.
“You can fill many pages in newspapers with 20 Marders [a kind of infantry fighting vehicle that Kyiv has requested from Germany]but there are somehow fewer articles about what our relationship with Russia should be like in the future, “he said.
“And this is at least such an exciting and relevant issue that we could discuss,” he added.
The remarks provoked an angry reaction from Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a prominent Liberal Free Democrat MP, one of three parties in Scholz’s ruling coalition.
Strack-Zimmermann, chairman of the Bundestag’s defense committee, said Plotner’s comments “reveal the way of thinking over the last few decades that has led us to this terrible situation.” “This is not the time to think lovingly about Russia, but to help Ukraine,” she added.
Plotner’s remarks, which he rarely speaks in public, shed little light on the way Scholz and his team view the war in Ukraine. Scholz was attacked by allies in Eastern Europe to maintain telephone contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite atrocities allegedly committed by Russian troops in cities such as Bucha and the devastation of Russian planes and artillery on Ukrainian cities.
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At the DGAP event, Plotner insisted that Germany supported Ukraine “politically, economically and militarily” “to a great extent.” He spoke only hours before Ukraine announced that it had adopted a number of PzH 2000 armored howitzers, the first heavy weapons Germany had delivered to Kyiv during the conflict. PzH is the most modern artillery in the Bundeswehr and can hit targets within 40 kilometers.
But Plotner also spoke of Ukraine’s possible EU membership, which will be discussed at an EU summit later this week, from the point of view of the government in Kyiv, which it may find unpleasant.
“Just because you are under attack does not automatically mean that the rule of law is improving,” he said. “The problems that Ukrainians are suffering from are structural, they are still there and they have to deal with them.
Noah Barkin, an expert at the German Marshall Fund, think tank, said: “The messages Plotner sent are worrying for the people of Ukraine, Germany’s partners in Eastern Europe and many of its closest allies around the world, including the United States. . ”
He said the comments raised questions about whether Scholz’s team was “learning the right lessons from Putin’s war”. “Can the people who have maintained close ties with Moscow and Beijing for years turn to a foreign policy vision that is appropriate to the challenges of this new era of systemic rivalry?” He asked.
Georg Löflmann, assistant professor of military research at the University of Warwick, said Plotner symbolized “the ability to establish Ostpolitik, the economic commitment and military restraint that have defined German foreign policy for decades.”
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