Monday, May 31, 2021
Arms export debate
Ukraine is hoping for German arms deliveries
While Robert Habeck has to take criticism for his thought games on arms exports to Ukraine in his home country, the words of the Green leader are welcomed in Kiev: President Zelensky hopes for more support from Germany. But he meets with opposition.
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj has spoken out in favor of support from Germany through arms deliveries. “Germany did not give us any military aid, but it could do that,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Ukraine needs missile speedboats, patrol boats, assault rifles, radio equipment and armored military vehicles. Although he was grateful to Germany for the support it had provided, he had hoped for more.
“Habeck understood that,” said Selenskyj. After a visit to Kiev, the co-chairman of the Greens, Robert Habeck, was fundamentally open to the delivery of defensive weapons to Ukraine. The Ukrainian President also criticized the so-called Normandy Format, in which Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia are discussing a solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. “I already understood at the first Normandy meeting that we move in circles like circus horses,” Selenskyj told the FAZ. These talks are not about the Crimea or pipelines, nor about security guarantees.
Rejection of the CDU, SPD and FDP
The Ukrainian President’s request for arms deliveries was rejected by the Union faction in the Bundestag. The conflict in Donbass cannot be resolved militarily, said deputy parliamentary group leader Johann Wadephul of the newspaper. “That is why arms deliveries are the wrong way to go in this case.” The deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Gabriela Heinrich, also categorically rejected arms deliveries to Ukraine. As a result, Germany would lose its mediator role within the Normandy format, she said.
The defense policy spokeswoman for the FDP parliamentary group, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, said there was no reason to have this discussion now, “just because the Greens have lost their way”. The Greens defense expert Tobias Lindner, on the other hand, stated that the focus of German engagement must be “a comprehensive economic and political stabilization of Ukraine”. But “armaments that are not used offensively, but only to protect people” could also help.
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