Berlin is rising above history to support Kyiv

Compared with the vocal and lavish support Ukraine has received from the US and the UK, that of Germany seems lukewarm, almost reluctant, especially to Ukrainians themselves. The moderation may be morally questionable, but it makes historical and political sense. Both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the country he leads are already way out of their comfort zone. Yet notwithstanding these mental constraints, Germany has made clear its stance against Russian aggression.
Scholz is among the few Western leaders who haven’t visited Kyiv since Russian troops retreated from its outskirts. Though Scholz finally agreed to supply heavy weapons to Ukraine, his decision intensified an impassioned public debate, in which open letters to the chancellor flew back and forth — there is still no clear majority in favor of the deliveries or against them. Some major public intellectuals, notably the philosopher Juergen Habermas, have weighed in against the “moral blackmail” of the fervent pro-Ukrainian camp, making the case for a “compromise” to end the war and arguing that supplying weapons to Ukraine will only multiply suffering.
The German establishment has not seriously considered an embargo on Russian gas, which fuels much of the German economy, even though some of the nation’s top economic experts have argued that the fallout wouldn’t hurt as much as the Covid-19 restrictions did. As other European nations have stopped gas imports from Russia, the Nord Stream pipeline to Greifswald has been Russia’s biggest and most reliable export channel.Ukrainians sense and deplore the lack of German enthusiasm. No Ukrainian streets are being named after Scholz, in contrast to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. No German flags wave at Ukrainian rallies next to the flags of the nation’s biggest supporters. On the social networks, Ukrainians were indignant when the Berlin police banned Ukrainian flags at war memorials on May 9, along with Russian flags.
A lingering diplomatic spat has followed Kyiv’s snub to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was told not to visit because of his role in trying to negotiate the previous compromise between Russia and Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. Authority-respecting Germans are slow to forget the insult that Andrij Melnyk, the combative Ukrainian ambassador, tossed at Scholz for refusing to go after the president had been disinvited: “Beleidigte Leberwurst” — literally, “an offended liver sausage,” someone who sulks childishly. “Olaf Scholz is no sausage, he is the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,” Wolfgang Kubicki, a vice president of the German parliament, defended the Social Democratic Party’s leader.
Melnyk, characteristically, has refused to apologise. He has been haranguing SPD politicians about their earlier softness on Russia for weeks, and some of them — notably former vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel — have been ready with some angry retorts. “Tanks and missiles cannot be a long-term replacement” for diplomacy, Gabriel told the ambassador.
One might get the impression that, despite an outpouring of sympathy for Ukrainian refugees among ordinary German citizens, their country, the land of Never Again, doesn’t really want Ukraine to win its just war against Vladimir Putin’s invading armies. And yet in reality, it indisputably does. “Putin may not and will not win the war,” Scholz has declared. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, currently the most popular cabinet member, has traveled to Kyiv and said clearly that she wants and expects Putin to fail. Even Gabriel has said that, as a result of the Ukraine war, Russia will be “reduced to a shadow of its former self.”
—Bloomberg