“Shame On You”
Melnyk counters Gabriel in angry tweets
04/17/2022, 9:31 p.m
In a guest article, ex-Foreign Minister Gabriel is helping President Steinmeier in the dispute with the Ukrainian government. Ambassador Melnyk doesn’t want to let this stand and rails against the ex-party leader and his “SPD cronies”. He writes: “The processing is still to come.”
The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, reacted with outrage to a guest article by ex-Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in “Spiegel”. In it, the SPD politician defended his party friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier in the dispute over the Federal President’s failed visit to Kyiv. As a former foreign minister, Steinmeier, together with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, did “more than anyone else in Europe” to support Ukraine, Gabriel wrote in a guest article for “Spiegel”.
In an interview, Melnyk accused Steinmeier, among other things, of having “created a spider’s web of contacts with Russia for decades”. “Spiders’ webs are known to be used to catch and then use the prey,” Gabriel wrote. “In a nutshell, this comparison suggests that the former chancellery and foreign minister helped organize the representation of Russia’s interests in Germany. That is untruthful and malicious.”
Melnyk took up this quote and wrote on Twitter: What was particularly malicious was the “years of Putin-friendly policy” that Gabriel and his “SPD cronies” had led, he wrote on Twitter. This “first brought about the barbaric war of annihilation” against Ukraine, Melnyk added. “The processing is still to come. Shame on you”.
In another tweet showed Melnyk excerpts from Russian media that reported on Gabriel’s statements. He wrote: “Well, now you even get applause from the old confidants from Moscow! All Russian propaganda slingshots praise your narrative about Ukrainian ‘conspiracy theories’ in the highest tones. Old friendship never rusts. Bullseye for Easter.”
With this, Melnyk refers to a certain passage in Gabriel’s guest contribution. The SPD politician wrote that it was understandable that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “wanted to express his anger and lack of understanding towards politicians from Germany and other EU countries for their earlier Russia and energy policies”. Here one often has to agree with Selenskyj. “What we should not accept, however, are conspiracy theories about our country’s politics and those responsible,” Gabriel added. He described Melnyk’s “spider web” statement as a “more dangerous variant of conspiracy theories”.
Melnyk held Gabriel in a third tweet its role in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which has now been shelved. “Thank you for clarifying the thoughts about Steinmeier’s spider web. Only: You are concealing “YOUR PERSONAL POLITICAL responsibility for Putin’s project Nord Stream 2, which you launched as Vice Chancellor in 2015.”