German top military had its own opinion – forced to resign

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Published 23 January 2022 at 13.05

Abroad. The head of the German navy Kay-Achim Schönbach resigns after proposing that the EU should treat Russia as an equal and “respected” party in terms of security policy, writes The Guardian.

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It was during a meeting in the Indian capital New Delhi a year ago that German Admiral Schönbach questioned that the troop presence at the Ukrainian border was due to Russia really intending to occupy Ukraine.

“This is nonsense. I think Putin is putting pressure on them because he can do it. And because he knows that it divides the EU. But what he really wants is respect. He wants to be treated as an equal and respected party. “And – my God – showing respect for someone costs so little, it costs nothing. If I had to choose, it would be easy to give him the respect he demands and probably deserves,” said Schönbach.

He also stated that Ukraine has no chance of getting Crimea back and that the conflict-ridden country is not ready to join NATO. Georgia, he said, may join NATO and meet the requirements for membership, but it would still be unwise to admit them.

Yesterday, Schönbach submitted his resignation, which was immediately approved by Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht. He explained his decision by saying that he wanted to “avoid further damage to the German navy and above all to the German Federal Republic”.

Restricted freedom of expression
Germany is formally a democracy but also has a view of the concept of democracy which is unusual in other democratic countries. In principle, individual citizens are obliged to refrain from criticizing the views of the democratically elected government, otherwise they can be classified as an “enemy of the state”, which means that they are monitored by the country's security services solely because of their opinions.

The order is unusual in the Western world, where authorities are usually only allowed to spy on government political opponents in order to prevent politically motivated crime and where government employees do not necessarily have to defend government policy when speaking in person, but are instead considered to have personal freedom of expression. .

However, this did not work in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) nor in the current Federal Republic, where German Säpo last week classified vaccine critics as “enemies of the state”, which Fria Tider was the only one to report on .