Union: “Serious mistake”
Traffic light averts tank vote in the Bundestag
9/23/2022 7:32 am
A Union application for the delivery of heavy weapons and battle tanks to Ukraine is a crucial test for the traffic light coalition: parts of the government factions see it in a similar way to the opposition. However, there is initially no vote in the Bundestag.
With their votes, the traffic light coalition and the members of the left-wing parliamentary group prevented a decision on a Union application to supply battle tanks and other heavy weapons to Ukraine. Instead, the application was referred by the Bundestag to the responsible Foreign Affairs Committee for consultation. “They hide behind procedural issues,” criticized the parliamentary director of the Union faction, Thorsten Frei from the CDU.
In its application, the Union calls for “immediate approval for the export of battle tanks, armored personnel carriers and transport tanks from industrial stocks to the Ukraine, and also for heavy weapons, in particular armored combat vehicles and more long-range artillery, also from the stocks of the Bundeswehr to deliver to Ukraine”.
The Ukraine now lacks these tanks, said defense politician Johann Wadephul from the CDU, “that’s a serious mistake.” SPD MP Gabriela Heinrich said the federal government was acting “level-headed, clear and far-sighted” in its reaction to the Russian war of aggression. Alexander Gauland of the AfD said the war in Ukraine was “a dispute that does not concern us”. Left MP Ali Al-Dailami called for “diplomatic offensives” instead of “tank offensives” from the Union.
Nouripour: “The balance has to be right”
Some representatives of the two traffic light coalition partners Greens and FDP had spoken out in favor of the direct delivery of German battle tanks in the past few weeks. In the SPD, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht have so far rejected this. Lambrecht had said: “Ukraine will now get tanks delivered very quickly, namely 40 tanks from Greece, 28 from Slovenia, and Germany will then help to close these gaps in the two countries.”
Green Party leader Omid Nouripour said in the plenary session: “In the end, the balance between consideration within the alliance and the needs of Ukraine must be right.” The fact that, given the poor equipment in the Bundeswehr, people have to worry about where Germany should get the weapons for Ukraine is the fault of the Union, whose politicians had been at the head of the Defense Ministry for 16 years, said the Chair of the Defense Committee , Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann from the FDP.