German Navy chief Kay-Achim Schönbach has resigned after controversial remarks about the crisis in Ukraine.
The vice-admiral, who had among other things described as inept the idea that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine, will leave his post “with immediate effect”, said a spokesman on Saturday.
“Putin wants to be respected”
What Vladimir Putin wants, “is to be respected”, declared this soldier according to a video circulating on the internet, filmed during a meeting of a think tank which was held Friday in New Delhi.
“It’s easy to give him the respect he wants, and probably also deserves,” he added. The idea that Russia wants to invade a part of Ukraine would be, according to him, “a nonsense”. He also felt that the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, had “gone, and would not return” to Ukraine.
“There is nothing to quibble about: it was clearly a fault”
This senior officer had made his mea culpa in the afternoon, describing his statements as “reckless”. “There is no quibbling: it was clearly a fault,” he wrote in a tweet.
But in a press release released in the evening, he explains that he submitted his resignation in order “to avoid additional damage to the German Navy and especially to the German Federal Republic”.
German ambassador to Ukraine summoned
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned German Ambassador Anka Feldhusen in the afternoon after these remarks deemed “absolutely unacceptable” by Kiev.
The vice-admiral’s statements came in the midst of a Russian-Western crisis around Ukraine.
Intense diplomatic efforts are currently being deployed on both sides to prevent the situation from degenerating, while tens of thousands of Russian soldiers are still massed on the Ukrainian border.