Attack reminds of Cold War
For Scholz, Putin sees Eastern Europe as a mere “buffer”
03/17/2022, 11:29 p.m
Chancellor Scholz stressed that Russia’s president alone was responsible for the attack on Ukraine. In memory of the late SPD politician Bahr, Scholz remembers the Russians who are demonstrating against Putin – and sees this as the basis for German-Russian relations.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has warned against equating Russia with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It was not the Russian people who made the fatal decision to attack Ukraine. This war is Putin’s war,” Scholz said in the evening at an event organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in honor of SPD politician Egon Bahr, who turned 100 on Friday would have grown old.
“This differentiation is important. It is important in order not to jeopardize the reconciliation between Germans and Russians after the Second World War,” emphasized Scholz. It is also important for living together with the Russians and Ukrainians in Germany. “And it’s important to show the courageous Russian men and women who are taking to the streets at great personal risk against Putin’s war of aggression one thing: you are not alone. We are with you.”
This other Russia is the foundation for future German-Russian relations. The SPD politician Egon Bahr, who died in 2015, is considered the architect of Chancellor Willy Brandt’s new Ostpolitik, which resulted in treaties with the GDR, Poland and the Soviet Union. Bahr’s guiding principle was “change through rapprochement”. From 1972 to 1976 he was Federal Minister for Special Tasks and then for Economic Cooperation.
Skepticism about the success of the talks in Belarus
Scholz accused Putin of wanting to turn back the clocks “to a time when the great powers shared the map among themselves.” He wants to treat the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as “mere buffers and zones of influence”. Scholz expressed reservations about the chances of success of the ongoing efforts to end the Ukraine war. “No one knows whether Russia is only holding the talks that are now taking place in Belarus to accompany its own advance,” he said.
Nevertheless, he supported the negotiations. But you are not naive, emphasized Scholz. “Dialogue is not an end in itself. Dialogue, in this case with Russia in particular, requires one’s own strengths, and Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr also knew that, by the way.” Scholz emphasized that the highest increase in defense spending in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany occurred during her time in government.