Ukraine talk at Maischberger
“Putin will not be satisfied”
By Marko Schlichting
05/04/2022 04:52
Left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht is back on a talk show, this time as a guest on Maischberger. She says she was wrong in predicting that the Russian army would not invade Ukraine. But most of their pre-war stereotypes have remained.
It’s February 20, 2022. The world is already out of order. Russian President Vladimir Putin promises in Moscow to withdraw Russian soldiers from the Ukrainian border and not to invade the country. US President Joe Biden doesn’t believe him. Baltic states are demanding an extension of the sanctions against Russia that the European Union imposed back in 2014. Other countries are discussing Ukraine’s entry into the EU. Diplomatic attempts to prevent war in Ukraine fail.
In the program Anne Will, SPD leader Lars Klingbeil warns Russia of severe sanctions in the event of an invasion of Ukraine. And the left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht says: Russia would have had enough reasons to invade Ukraine beforehand. She calls for the dismantling of western missile bases near the Russian border. And she is 100 percent sure that Russia has no real interest in invading Ukraine.
Four days later, on February 24th, people in Europe wake up to a new world. The Russian President has broken his promise made four days earlier. Russian soldiers are attacking the Ukraine, wanting to occupy the country in a blitzkrieg lasting about two days. But Russia fails. The people of Ukraine are still fighting back. Most parties in Germany are changing their policies. And the left? She is arguing within the party, and last week she was the only faction in the Bundestag that voted unanimously against the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine.
Now Wagenknecht is on the Maischberger show in the first, which is now running twice a week. On Tuesday evening she discussed with Marieluise Beck from the Greens. The former member of parliament has set up a foundation dealing with Eastern European politics and advocates any German aid to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russian aggressor.
“We must not be drawn into nuclear war”
Wagenknecht admits today that she was wrong about Anne Will. And she says: “I’ve learned that Putin is someone who tends to make dangerous short-circuits when he feels cornered. We have to take that seriously.” She also knows what that means for the West: don’t supply heavy weapons, end the war in Ukraine with diplomacy. She proposes talks between Germany, France and Russia. Marieluise Beck wants to know exactly and asks whether Ukraine should be left out of such talks. “Yes,” answers Wagenknecht. “The war also affects us. And if Ukraine doesn’t want that (the negotiations, editor’s note) then we can’t allow ourselves to be drawn into a nuclear war.”
The negotiations must be about Ukraine’s neutrality. The Ukrainian President Selenskyj offered it to the Russian President, counters Beck. After some hesitation, Wagenknecht agrees, but Selenskyj didn’t mean it seriously. And after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Biden spoke out against it, the topic was off the table again. Wagenknecht calls the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine “irresponsible”. Because: “For Ukraine, that means even more victims, even more destruction, even more suffering.” Germany allowed itself to be drawn into American strategy.
As for the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine, Beck disagrees. “It’s not the case that weapons only kill, weapons can also protect,” says the former Green Party member of the Bundestag. For example, the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv is constantly being shelled by Russian troops. If these weapons and this army could be rendered harmless through the use of weapons, civilians would be protected. “And we must have learned that there are regimes that are so evil and so aggressive that they have to be fought down with weapons,” says Beck. So she came across the wrong person at Wagenknecht. “If Ukraine has more weapons, the Russians will also use more weapons,” she counters. And then they come, the old stereotypes.
“No one called for Russia’s surrender”
It’s a criminal war, she admits. But at least NATO, with its expansion into Eastern Europe, is not entirely innocent, she suggests. In doing so, she forgets that NATO has not expanded, but rather was invited by its current Eastern European member states. Now Finland and Sweden are also planning to join NATO, says Beck during the dispute with Wagenknecht. She can’t say that’s good at all: “We keep escalating. Putin has announced that in this case he wants to station nuclear missiles in the Russian city of Kaliningrad.” “Does Putin now decide what these countries do and don’t do?” counters Beck. By the way: The rockets in Kaliningrad already exist. The Kremlin confirmed this in May 2018.
Wagenknecht ignores Putin’s statement that Ukraine doesn’t actually exist, as well as his threats to other countries. The Russian army is not in a position to do this, she says. She also does not want to talk about war crimes or a war that violates international law. And the fact that Russia attacked Ukraine and not the other way around seems to have slipped her mind for a moment when she says things like: “Terrible things are happening in this war – on both sides.” And a little later: “The Americans say they want to massively weaken Russia with this war. The goal is not a quick end to the war, but to heat up the war with many constant deliveries of weapons and to accept that the people there die.” Beck has to give in: Nobody called for Russia’s capitulation. “Russia should withdraw from this illegal war of aggression and from Ukraine.”
At the end of the argument, Marieluise Beck made a very clear appeal to continue supporting Ukraine. “If the Ukrainians decide to live freely and not be a colony of Russia, then we have to accept that. We mustn’t give Putin what he wants. He won’t be satisfied afterwards.”