Olaf Scholz on ZDF: The Chancellor gets tangled up

Olaf Scholz looks tidy this Monday evening on ZDF. Perhaps the German chancellor still has the comments on his appearance in Düsseldorf the day before in his ears. He defended his government’s support for Ukraine at a trade union rally against a loud whistling concert, which many liked and some even reminded of his Hanseatic predecessor Helmut Schmidt. The Chancellor then comes across as self-confident on public television. But it’s not the only impression he makes.

At the heart of the interview is the attempt to portray his actions, which many observers perceive as hesitant in the face of the war in Europe, as something completely different: namely the consistent implementation of a strategy that had been thought through from the outset.

The two ZDF interviewers ask why Germany has had such a difficult time supplying heavy weapons for so long. Scholz contradicts and calls his decisions prudent and above all: in agreement with the other western partners. German aid, says Scholz, also helped the Ukrainian military hold out for so long.

That is certainly true; basically every cartridge helps. However, it is also true that – measured in terms of economic power – Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Croatia and Slovenia in Europe have so far provided more bilateral direct aid to Ukraine than Germany.

“The Problem” in the Chancellery

And it is also true that the German chancellor has long resisted delivering heavy weapons to Ukraine. The Green member of the Bundestag Anton Hofreiter, chairman of the European Committee in Parliament, was so frustrated in mid-April that he complained that “the problem” was in the Chancellery. Many in his party saw it that way, and the grumblings in the FDP grew louder by the day.

The turnaround only came last Tuesday; Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, a friend of the Chancellor’s party, surprisingly announced the delivery of Gepard tanks to Ukraine at the American Air Force base in Ramstein. According to reports, the Chancellor had made the decision the day before in a small group.

When the ZDF journalists dig deeper into the subject of heavy weapons, Scholz becomes indignant. Some fixed themselves on “terminology”. You could also hold a “four-hour seminar” on this “rhetorical word”. His host doesn’t want that. Wtoo? A quick look on the internet will answer the question of what is and is not a heavy military weapon.

As irrelevant as the quibbling about weapons is from the chancellor’s point of view, the fears of the Germans are, by his own admission, just as important to him. Many citizens were worried about a possible escalation of the war, “quite rightly so”. He emphasizes that NATO and Germany will not be directly involved in this war. When asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin interprets the word “immediately” in the same way as the West in general and Scholz in particular, he does not respond, and the ZDF interviewers do not dig deeper.

Nice sentence, zero informational value

Instead, they ask what “the goal” is. What does it mean when Scholz and others say Putin must not win? The goal, says the chancellor, is the end of hostilities and the complete withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Ukraine. The Chancellor does not reveal why and under what circumstances Putin should be willing to do so. Instead, there follows a sentence that sounds nice, but contains no informational value: “Russia must not win, and Ukraine must not lose.”

When the television journalists ask, Scholz reacts as he often does when he is annoyed: arrogant. He has the feeling that it has remained hidden from one or the other, so he’s saying it again: “Russia is one of the most highly armed nuclear powers in the world, a world power in this sense too”. There really is no such thing as a superlative, but Scholz seems very confident in himself at the moment.

Incidentally, he also does this when he makes other, substantive mistakes, for example when he describes Germany as “the largest country in the European Union” (that’s only measured in terms of population, not in terms of area) or when he claims that it has the largest “military force” on the European continent – ​​that is even more than Great Britain with its 225 and France with its 290 nuclear warheads. But that’s only marginally.

Referring to Russia, the chancellor continued that Putin had not thought through his “entire operation”: the strength of the Ukrainian resistance, the military support from abroad, the sanctions. It is certainly not intentional that he en passant adopts the language of the Kremlin, which has been belittling the war as an “operation” from the start.

The Chancellor’s reluctance to respond to the rhetoric of the American government is interesting. While Scholz always talks about how important agreements and common lines with Washington are to him, he does not want to own the goal of permanently weakening Russia to such an extent that the country is never again able to launch attacks like the one in Ukraine do. The aim is for Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and freedom and for Russia not to get through with its “project”. The latter is difficult enough.

Next up is Russian oil and gas supplies to Europe. Despite repeated inquiries, Scholz avoids the dispute within the EU about oil. It’s about finding a common line in the international community, he says, referring to Hungary’s resistance, so he can’t act as a “live ticker”. He then reiterates his belief that sanctions should hurt Russia more than Europe.

When it comes to gas, Germany is in a situation that cannot be changed overnight, the Chancellor continued. The Federal Republic will be able to do without imports from Russia in the long term, but before that pipelines and terminals for loading liquid gas would have to be built. What does that mean? “If things went the way it always did in Germany, it would take many years,” jokes Scholz – which is also funny because his party, including him as minister, has been in government for a very long time.

“We believe,” the Chancellor continues combatively, “that we can speed things up enormously.” He shies away from giving a time. But he does not shy away from big announcements: “We are so ambitious that we believe that some will look around to see how quickly this can be done.”

Putin’s “most loyal gas lobbyist”

Towards the end of the conversation, three more topics follow, to which Scholz always reacts in a remarkable way. First there is his party colleague Gerhard Schröder, whom the ZDF journalist first describes as “Putin’s most loyal gas lobbyist” and then only as “the problem”. So how to proceed with the comrade? Scholz finds the question funny. Germany was a free country and he could not give orders to his predecessor. He thinks what Schröder is doing is not right and has been “impossible” since the beginning of the war at the latest.

Then comes the question of the planned trip to Kyiv by CDU leader Friedrich Merz. Scholz responds in a remarkably friendly manner when asked about it. Of course, the Christian Democrat informed him that he wanted to travel. He, Scholz, approves of that and will talk to Merz afterwards. Complete.

Scholz seems much less conciliatory when it comes to his own travel plans: It is “a very remarkable event that the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, who with a majority like, I think, nobody before him, in the Federal Assembly a few weeks before has been nominated for a second term has been disinvited”. This affront, he says, is of course in the way of “the thing”, i.e. his journey. “You can’t do that,” says Scholz apodictically. Germany is giving “so much military and financial help” and will also be needed in the future for Ukraine’s security guarantees.

The fact that German weapons and German money, from the point of view of Ukraine, might not make the once very, very pro-Kremlin-friendly course of the former minister and current Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier forgotten, does not seem to occur to Scholz. That could be one of the reasons why he, who in his own opinion has done everything right since the beginning of the war and, at worst, is misunderstood by less strategically astute minds, is not counted among the most reliable friends in the country struggling to survive. With Scholz’ appearance that evening, nothing has probably changed.