Se old fart brainless ZPD member surely will welcome him.
Well after letting Erich "Darth" Vad spout fifth column nonsense for the umtieth time in the news a good article from NTV:
Zehn Monate nach Beginn von Putins Großinvasion in der Ukraine schickt Deutschland Schützenpanzer. Warum tat sich Olaf Scholz mit diesem Schritt so schwer? Osteuropa-Expertin Davies über russische Kriegsziele und deutsche Illusionen.
www.n-tv.de
Franziska Davies teaches as Academic Councillor at the Chair of Eastern European History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
Davies on "MARDER" commitment
"The allies are used as an excuse".
Ten months after the start of Putin's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany is sending armored personnel carriers. Why did Chancellor Olaf Scholz have such a hard time with this step and why do Kiev's troops have to keep waiting for the "Leopard 2"? Eastern Europe historian Franziska Davies from Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University on Russian war aims and German illusions.
ntv.de: Last night, the German government agreed to supply Ukraine with "Marder" infantry fighting vehicles. Tanks will also come from France and the USA. Does that raise the West's aid to a new level?
Franziska Davies: Yes, Ukraine has been asking for Western tanks for a long time, so this is a correct and important step, but also one that is long overdue on the part of the three countries. There is a pattern to Germany's actions: it refuses to supply certain weapons systems on unconvincing grounds and only follows suit when others decide to make similar deliveries.
When asked to supply weapons, the response from the Chancellor's Office has always been: Germany should not go it alone. Is that one of the "unconvincing justifications" in your view?
That is not convincing at all. On the one hand, Scholz explicitly claims a military leadership role for Germany in Europe; on the other hand, the allies have to be used as an excuse for Germany not taking on this leadership role. Already a few weeks after the total invasion, military experts like Claudia Major demanded "Leopard" tanks for Ukraine. Since this is a German tank, any delivery to Ukraine must be approved by the German government. But instead of taking the claimed leadership role here and coordinating and pushing the deliveries, the German government blocks and refers to the allies, but they have already signaled months ago that they do not stand in the way of the delivery of the "Leopards". To date, there are no definitive commitments for the "Leopards" from Germany.
How important would they be for the Ukrainian troops?
In the course of the war, we have seen how important - indeed, how decisive for the war - Western arms supplies are for Ukraine. This was the only way to recapture large parts of the territories occupied since 2022. It is unclear to me why the German government is acting in this way, but in view of some statements from the SPD, I suspect that significant parts of the parliamentary group actually do not want to support the announced "turn of the times" and must be pressured to make certain decisions. Ukraine is paying the price for this attitude.
SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich recently told the "taz" newspaper, referring to the war year 2022: "I didn't suspect that people would still do this to each other here." Do you share his view?
In view of Russian war crimes, it is infamous to speak of "reciprocity" here. And it is an important political decision-maker who is doing that, that worries me very much. At the same time, the war situation is quite clear: No Ukrainian soldier terrorizes Russian civilians. No Russian city is being reduced to rubble by Ukrainian bombs. Aggressor and victim are to be named here quite clearly.
Where do you see the reasons for Mützenich not doing exactly that?
Frankly, I am a bit perplexed why this is still happening almost a year after the Russian total invasion. The intention of annihilation is openly formulated by Putin and his entourage, and in the Russian-occupied territories we are witnessing a genocidal occupation policy. Until February 2022, many could possibly not imagine that in the Europe of the 21st century, a state would still instigate a war out of a neo-imperial, pseudo-historical mission to destroy a state that is understood to be inferior, a historical mistake. But why this is still happening is beyond me. Many apparently refuse to acknowledge reality, possibly because they would then have to abandon long-held notions of the panacea of "dialogue" or their romanticization of Russia, or else because they find it difficult to stand by their misconceptions.
In your estimation, how widespread is the idea that this will to destroy, as you just described it, can no longer exist in this day and age?
That's hard to say, but the fact that such voices can be heard again and again from the largest governing party is very disturbing. In mid-December, Olaf Scholz gave a speech to the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, in which he said that if Russia stopped intervening in its neighboring state, then we could return to the economic relations of the pre-war period. He did not even call for the Putin regime to step down. But after what has already happened and is still happening in Ukraine, there can be no return to normal relations.
Ukraine has been resisting the Russian incursion for ten months now and is still being urged by voices from the West to finally negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Most recently, criminal lawyer Reinhard Merkel even said that Kiev was obliged to enter into negotiations. Does that make sense?
No, international law does not impose any obligation on Ukraine to negotiate with Russia. On the contrary, according to international law, it is absolutely clear that Ukraine has a right to defend itself.
And a moral obligation - to protect its population from further suffering, for example?
This is an argument we have been hearing for months, and it was in every one of the open letters. The German debate is going madly in circles there. Interestingly, the call to negotiate is always addressed to Ukraine, i.e. to the victim and not to the aggressor. And since Butscha at the latest, it should be clear to everyone that a Russian partial occupation would not end the suffering of the population. Occupations can even cause more deaths than military conflicts. All those who use this argument commit the same mistake.
Namely which one?
They never answer the question of what Ukraine should and can negotiate about if it is to be destroyed. The destruction of Ukraine is Russia's openly stated war goal, and this fact is consistently omitted from the demands for negotiations. How is Ukraine to negotiate when its only choice is between defense and annihilation?
The counterargument might be: If Russia is allowed to grab parts of Ukraine, surely it will hopefully end the attempt to destroy the country.
But we see something else. We see that in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, a reign of terror is immediately established. And as soon as a locality is liberated from Russian occupation again, we learn about civilians who were tortured, abducted, shot there. The argument that Ukraine has a duty to negotiate to end the war ignores the fact that this would lead to a regime of terror by the Russians in large parts of Ukraine.
Another argument used to urge Ukraine to negotiate is that the risk of nuclear war is too high.
A nuclear war should be avoided, that is quite clear, and this risk must be taken seriously. But if one were to follow this logic, that as a responsible state one must not defend oneself against a nuclear power, precisely in order to exclude this risk, what kind of signal would that send to all the other powers of this world? The signal would be, "Once you get nuclear weapons, you can do whatever you want." That would be an extremely dangerous signal. In addition, the dictum "You can't win a war against a nuclear power" is wrong; it is not historically true.
What examples disprove it?
In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its soldiers from Afghanistan after ten years of war. 1973 saw the withdrawal of US soldiers from Vietnam. In 1962, Algeria achieved independence from France after the Algerian War. The USA and the Soviet Union had been nuclear powers for a long time at the time of their respective withdrawals; in the case of France, nuclear armament more or less took place during the Algerian War; officially, France had been a nuclear power since 1961.
So there is no argument that obliges Ukraine to negotiate. But couldn't it do it anyway? Many say diplomacy can't hurt.
Negotiating at this stage would mean Ukraine giving up large parts of its territory. And it could not even be sure that a new attack would not occur at a later date. Just as the 2014 Minsk agreements were used to create a gateway into Ukraine with the so-called "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk. Negotiations at this point in time are not an option for Ukraine, and the debate around this has been going around in circles in Germany for ten months.
From your point of view, is this just a nuisance or is it also dangerous?
The debate is dangerous in that German support is still not what it could be. Considerable parts of the SPD still haven't grasped the war and still haven't understood Germany's responsibility. Now Germany will supply infantry fighting vehicles, but in terms of battle tanks, such as the "Leopard 2," it continues to block. Instead, the chancellor is praised for his prudence, but it is clear that this hesitation, which is called "prudence," is costing people their lives in Ukraine every day.
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