Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who is currently the Green Party’s chancellor candidate in the upcoming elections, said that if elected, he would send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked his allies for long-range weapons so that the Ukrainian military can attack Russian logistics centers and military bases far behind the front line and within Russian territory.
But until now, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has chosen not to supply Taurus cruise missiles, saying they could enable Ukraine to also hit targets in the Russian capital Moscow.
[…]
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron reacted to the Russian air barrage on Ukraine, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not want peace and is not ready to negotiate.”
“It’s clear that President Putin intends to intensify the fighting,” Macron said.
He made the remarks as he prepared to leave Argentina to attend the G20 Summit in Brazil.
[…]
The French president, however, said Ukraine’s allies “must remain united … on an agenda for genuine peace, that is to say, a peace that does not mean Ukraine’s surrender.”
Macron highlighted that his country’s priority was to “equip, support and help Ukraine to resist.”
Wow, that was not a headline I was expecting to see. The sentiment has shifted quite dramatically in the past two years.
At least regarding Germany the truth is the Greens have been pushing for more weapons deliveries almost since the beginning of the war. It has been pretty clear that not delivering Taurus is because Scholz decided so.
They were also arguably the only major German party that took the Russian threat seriously before the war.
And props to Habeck for putting a stop to that pipeline project when he got the chance.
German: https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik/id_100419068/nordstream-2-wie-robert-habeck-die-pipeline-stoppte-.html
English (via Google Translate) https://www-t--online-de.translate.goog/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik/id_100419068/nordstream-2-wie-robert-habeck-die-pipeline-stoppte-.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
That dude to me is the most competent AND down to earth person in German politics right now.
And literally everyone else (besides the Left Party) is attacking him as their main opponent for that, despite the party being #4 in the polls at the moment and the Russian sleeper agents AfD+BSW are threatening to breach 1/3rd of the votes blocking any further changes of the constitution even if all democratic parties agree on it.
I really don’t get why the CDU chose to attack the greens over the AfD and how they can seriously consider the scheming FDP as a possible coalition-option…
The Greens started out as a party of (among other things) the peace movement but quickly realised that vulgar pacifism is a) self-defeating and b) gets exploited by war mongers. In short, you gotta stand up to bullies. They very much backed the Kosovo intervention, and generally are in favour of talking softly but carrying a big stick. With friends, while singing Kumbaya, before aiming it at some genocidal maniac. In short scratch the hippie attitude now it’s metal.
Really? The Greens are the most hawkish party in Germany, when it comes to Russia.
Among German parties, the Greens were the most skeptical of Russia for the past ~15 years. But until the war, they were never hawkish. Only days before the war started, foreign minister Baerbock (Greens) said Germany wouldn’t deliver weapons. In late January 2022, the government then promised “5000 helmets” (although I think this may have had more to do with the chancellor than the Greens).
Habeck was lobbying for delivering weapons to Ukraine in 2021. https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/habeck-gruene-zu-waffenlieferungen-an-ukraine-die-ukraine-100.html
I’d completely missed that. Seems Habeck was right yet again.
Habeck wanted to deliver weapons before the war started.
It was more about the then minister of defence, that’s why she was gone.
Reading her Wikipedia entry, it sounds like she was dismissed for being too much of a Scholz loyalist. And that kind of matches my recollection: She was careful to discuss everything with Scholz and to not cross him, whereas her [suc]cessor just took matters in his own hands and ran with it.
I remembered it wrong. She herself asked for being let go, officially because the constant discussions about her person made it impossible for her to do her job (her statement).
TIL: The Green Party has been actively supporting Ukraine for quite some time. I was mostly just thinking of the general atmosphere of political discourse surrounding this topic. Remember that time when it wasn’t even clear that sending weapons is ok.