Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 239

On September 25 2022 22:12 Gahlo wrote:

Nope!

“If you want to be part of the resistance against Russian disinformation,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger said, “join the fellas.”

It’s an admittedly unorthodox way to begin an interview with the outgoing Republican congressman, one of two on the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 and an outspoken opponent of former President Donald Trump.

But then, Kinzinger is equally outspoken about his support for Ukraine. He is the first and only sitting U.S. legislator to enlist in the “North Atlantic Fella Organization,” or NAFO, an increasingly influential online army of activists who savagely mock pro-Kremlin trolls and Russian diplomats on Twitter and are instantly recognizable by their individually stylized or militarized Shiba Inu avatars.

Source

So far, seven months into the war, Berlin has pledged over 700 million euros’ worth of military aid, or about $678 million, to Ukraine, including a modern air defense system. It has also sent multiple rocket launchers, sophisticated artillery and dozens of antiaircraft guns, which contributed to Ukraine’s stunning recent advance on the battlefield when in the space of six days its forces took back more territory than Russia had grabbed in six months.

But Mr. Scholz has refused to provide Ukraine with Leopard battle tanks or Marder infantry fighting vehicles, which Ukrainian officials have repeatedly asked for. As they pivot from a defensive posture to an offensive one in the south, Ukrainian forces need tanks to break through defensive lines and recapture more territory before winter and, as Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, put it, “liberate people and save them from genocide.”

Mr. Scholz’s refusal — which goes against the will of many even inside his own governing coalition — has earned him noisy and near-unanimous criticism among Germany’s Eastern European neighbors, not least in Ukraine. Commanders along the front say the Germans’ reluctance to provide battle tanks points to a policy of seeking a negotiated settlement along existing lines, rather than a Ukrainian success in pushing out the Russians.

“Not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses,” Mr. Kuleba said recently on Twitter. “What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not?”

Pressed on that question in the interview with The Times, Mr. Scholz bristled.

“Leadership does not mean you do what people ask you,” he said. “Leadership is about taking the right decisions and to be very strong. And this is what I’m doing.”

“We are cooperating and we are doing it together with our allies, and we are never doing something by ourselves alone,” Mr. Scholz added. “And this is the way we react to a very dangerous war.”

“It is absolutely wise never to do something just by yourself,” he said.

In the interview, Mr. Scholz rejected any suggestion that the United States might in fact welcome Germany’s stepping up and taking the lead on sending battle tanks, which are cumbersome to transport, especially across an ocean.

But after Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive, the U.S. Embassy in Berlin posted on Twitter what many interpreted as a veiled invitation to Germany: “We call on all allies and partners to lend as much support as possible to Ukraine in its struggle for democratic sovereignty,” the embassy tweeted. “The decision on the type of aid ultimately lies with each country.”

This month’s battlefield gains by Ukrainian forces have only added to the pressure on Mr. Scholz, whose government has cited different reasons at different times for not sending tanks.

After Mr. Scholz’s defense minister, Christine Lambrecht, said this month that Germany had to hold onto its tanks to fulfill its obligations to NATO, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that arming Ukraine was more important.

“By ensuring that Russia, that President Putin, does not win in Ukraine, we are also increasing our own security and strengthening the alliance,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.

Even within Germany, impatience has been building.

“All of Europe is waiting for Germany to make the first step,” said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a member of the Free Democrats, one of the three parties in Mr. Scholz’s coalition government, and the head of the parliamentary defense committee.

Mr. Scholz’s caution was also evident during the interview in his reluctance to detail his own vision for how the war might end, preferring instead to cite a guest essay by President Biden that The Times published in May.

In the essay, Mr. Biden quoted President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who at the time had said that ultimately the war would “only definitively end through diplomacy.” Mr. Biden wrote that the West did not seek war between NATO and Russia, but that the military support it was sending to Ukraine was meant to prepare and strengthen Kyiv’s hand when the time for diplomacy came.

“I very much appreciated what President Biden wrote in The New York Times,” Mr. Scholz said. “If you want me to subscribe to this article, I will do that. I can go with any sentence.”

The announcement that Mr. Putin made last week that he was calling up roughly 300,000 reservists and was moving ahead with annexing part of eastern Ukraine showed that he was “desperate,” the chancellor said, adding that it also showed that Mr. Putin had underestimated Ukraine’s ability to fight back and the West’s unity in supporting Kyiv.

“It’s obvious that Putin does not know how to get out of this,” Mr. Scholz said. “It’s obvious that he will not win the war and Russia will not win the war.”

But he would not utter the word “victory” at all, let alone define it.

Did he want Ukraine to win? “Russia can’t win,” was as far as he would go.

For a chancellor with a robotic manner that long ago earned him the nickname “Scholz-o-mat,” there were moments during the sometimes tense interview with The Times when Mr. Scholz was surprisingly emotional when reacting to questions that challenged him. Several times, he berated journalists for asking those.

Asked why Germany will still not spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on military spending in the next couple of years, as Mr. Scholz has said it would, he snapped: “Asking that question is not serious, to be very honest.”

Germany’s chancellor is not the only one hesitating to send sophisticated weapons systems to Ukraine.

Calls by Mr. Zelensky for American long-range guided missiles have so far gone unanswered, too.

But Mr. Putin’s veiled threat last week of a tactical nuclear strike when he was announcing the force buildup and promising to see the war through has been resonating in Berlin.

“Unfortunately, nuclear blackmail seems to be working in Germany,” said Claudia Major, the head of security policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

“If the chancellor is serious about leading, he will have to show initiative and, yes, step up,” Ms. Major said. “Doing a lot and leading is not the same thing.”

On September 26 2022 01:55 Magic Powers wrote:


Can anyone explain the reasoning? Germany has sent a bunch of AA, but tanks would escalate things? How?

On September 26 2022 01:56 Gorsameth wrote:
I wasn't aware that Scholz was the head of NATO...

Can Germany's political coalition stop pussyfooting about and just order him to allow other countries to send German tanks, Germany doesn't even have to send any themselves, just stop standing in the way of others who want to.

On September 26 2022 02:48 Simberto wrote:
What i find so weird is that this idea that sending tanks goes against NATO policy seems to come exclusively from Scholz, but on the other hand other NATO countries also don't make very clear statements here.

So is Scholz hiding behind a fake argument here, or is NATO using Scholz as the bad cop? Why does no one else say "Sending NATO tanks is totally okay?" The US could easily do that, for example.

The whole "not saying that Ukraine should win" thing is just bizarre. That thing has been going on for a while, and i have no clue what it is supposed to be about. It seems very important to Scholz to never explicitly say that Ukraine should win, and i just can't figure out why that is the case.

The whole communication is so weird and unclear, but it seems to not be exclusively Scholz.