Russia announced ceasefire in Mariupol for Thursday
The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz has accused selected German governments of blatant errors in assessing Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin and his goals. “In Germany, the series of misjudgments and the resulting series of errors is particularly long,” wrote Merz in a guest article for “Die Zeit”. He cited the state of the Bundeswehr as an example: “The peace dividend after reunification is nowhere as generous as it is here. The price is a largely dysfunctional army.”
The opposition leader in the Bundestag also listed the phasing out of nuclear energy as one of these cases “which has nothing to do with the safety of our power plants”. In return, an ever-increasing dependence on Russian gas was accepted. “Nord Stream 2 was never a ‘purely private’ project, on the contrary, this pipeline was the last piece of the political puzzle in the game, which divides Europe and should increase our dependency even more.”
The most serious mistake was to reject Ukraine’s application for NATO membership, Merz continued. “Out of sheer fear of Putin and his threats, Germany and France in particular didn’t want to ‘provoke’ him.” But since the attack on Ukraine on February 24, we’ve known what it’s really about: “He’s misled us for years and led by the nose, accompanied by a network of German entrepreneurs and politicians who have given their minds second to making money, right down to a former German chancellor who is losing the last vestige of his decency these days.”