Ukraine talk in Lanz: “Then Europe will fall under Russian dominance” Ukraine talk in Lanz: “Then Europe will fall under Russian dominance”

The public dispute between Berlin and Paris over aid to Ukraine worries Russian human rights activist Irina Scherbakova. This is a sign “that you don’t really want Putin to completely lose the war and Ukraine to win the war,” she said on “Markus Lanz” on Wednesday evening. Just like at the beginning of the war, support only comes ‘drop by drop’.

The guests

The Taurus lies

“It’s not that easy to do: if you deliver everything you want, then everything will be fine,” said SPD foreign policy expert Ralf Stegner. The debate proposed ‘crazier and crazier things’ and acted as if Germany was about to enter war. “The only question being discussed is ‘How is the war fought’ and not ‘How can it be ended?’” Stegner commented, among other things, on what he saw as the “fetish debate” over the delivery of the Taurus cruise missiles .

Lanz wanted to know exactly. Are German soldiers really needed to program the cruise missiles in Ukraine? This is a decisive counterargument against the delivery, as Bundeswehr personnel would then have to be sent to the war zone. According to experts, Ukrainian soldiers can be taught how to operate Taurus. “It’s not a problem,” Lanz said.

“You cannot judge that, and neither can I,” Stegner – also chairman of the Bundestag Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation – withdrew, as he so often does, out of alleged ignorance.

Lanz asked: Taurus was also deployed in Spain or South Korea without German soldiers having to be present there. These countries are not at war, the social democrat replied.

“I don’t understand the logic,” Scherbakova said, and Lanz agreed. Ukraine is drying up and has received only 30 percent of what the country was promised, criticized the co-founder of the Nobel Prize-winning organization Memorial. It’s not just about Taurus, but about support in general. The fact that this is largely not happening is a sign of weakness for Vladimir Putin and his ‘mafia state’.

War economy in Germany?

“We have not delivered across the board what Ukraine needs,” agreed military expert Christian Mölling of the German Foreign Policy Association Scherbakova. He described the attitude of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) with the words: “Wash me, but don’t wet me.”

Ukrainian soldiers would die, also because Germany failed to supply more ammunition. Other countries would invest a significantly larger share of their gross national product in aid to Ukraine and accept a “curtailment of prosperity” in return, Mölling said.

The “Correctiv” investigative journalist and Russia expert Marcus Bensmann saw it similarly with Lanz. “We didn’t understand that we clearly had to move to a war economy,” he said. Because: “If Ukraine falls and the US abandons the transatlantic bond, Europe will fall under Russian dominance.”

According to Bensmann, not everyone is yet aware of the seriousness of the situation – possibly including Scholz. He demanded a “blood, sweat and tears” speech, like the one British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used to prepare his country for hardship at the start of World War II. “If Russia wins, there will be no democracy here anymore,” Bensmann warned, for example, of Kremlin-controlled governments in Eastern Europe through which Putin could directly influence the European Union.

Bensmann met Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Freiburg in 2020, shortly before his return to Russia and immediate arrest. “I have to go back,” Navalny said, explaining his return home. As a politician he could not be credible in exile – because that would also have been interpreted as weakness by the Kremlin, Bensmann described Navalny’s motivation on ZDF.

“It was really murder in installments,” Scherbakova confirmed her accusation about Navalny’s death. He had to endure even more terrible prison conditions than Mikhail Khodorkovsky – from 300 days of solitary confinement in a small, poor cell to drinking scalding hot water. “He was Putin’s most dangerous opponent,” Scherbakova said, paying tribute to her companion.

Sources