The first year of Russia's major invasion of Ukraine fundamentally changed German politics. But the country is struggling with the “turn of the era”.
After Russian missile attack in early February : Destruction in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine
It had been three and a half days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine a year ago when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivered a speech in the country's parliament that would go down in German history: The talk of the turning point for Germany. “The world after is no longer the same as the world before,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz this Sunday after the start of the invasion in the German parliament.
A turning point speech on a Sunday: Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the special session of the German Bundestag on February 27, 2022
“The main question is whether power can break the law, whether we allow Putin turn the clocks back to the times of the great powers of the 19th century, or whether we can muster the strength to set limits on warmongers like Putin,” said the German Chancellor on February 27, 2022.
Night of despair in New York: Germany is sleeping
A good 72 hours earlier, UN Secretary General António Guterres had urged the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations in New York one last time to refrain from a full-scale attack by Russia against Ukraine.
In Germany, the hour hand moved from three to four o'clock at night. Most decision-makers in the German capital of Berlin slept through this moment. It is at this moment that a historic course was set for Germany. Without the largest economy in Europe being able to change anything of its own accord. Germany is not a military power. Russian President Putin sent his army to Kiev with the aim of shifting borders in Europe. The Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic last attempted this in the 1990s with the aim of creating a Greater Serbia in the Western Balkans.
Now it's about much more: The largest territorial state in the world, the nuclear state Russia, acts as an imperial power that calls into question the post-war order created in the United Nations Charter at the end of the Second World War. That is also what the US historian and Yale professor Timothy Snyder says.
The UN Charter was written on the basis of the world's experiences with the imperialist German “Third Reich” under the Nazi leadership of Adolf Hitler. What's more: “With the attack on Ukraine, Putin doesn't just want to erase an independent country from the world map,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in his speech about the turn of the century. “It is shattering the European security order that has lasted for almost half a century since the Helsinki Final Act.”
< p>The Moscow-loyal GDR State Council Chairman Erich Honecker (left) and the West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in Helsinki in 1975
Today's OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) emerged from the final act of the 1975 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, which ushered in the peaceful end of the Cold War in Europe. The was supposed to restore peace in the occupied areas of eastern Ukraine after 2014, after the Kremlin had sent Russian soldiers there in 2014 – in response to the pro-European Euromaidan revolution in February 2014 and the overthrow of President Viktor, who was loyal to Putin Yanukovych. The OSCE retreated from Ukraine with Russia's attack. Putin, according to Scholz in his speech at the turn of the century, is “also marginalized by the entire international community”.
Billions of euros for the Bundeswehr: Hardly any orders
So now: a turning point. The Bundeswehr is to be upgraded with a special fund of more than 100 billion euros. A year later, however, orders from the German armaments industry are only slowly picking up. And: Ukraine has been equipped with weapons of war from Germany for a year now. It is a break with German policy not to send weapons to war zones if possible. According to surveys, however, the majority of Germans agree. As the pressure on Berlin increased over the course of the year to also approve and supply Leopard-type infantry fighting vehicles and main battle tanks itself, the discussion divided the country: one half was in favor, the other half was going too far. And the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, initially resisted this step under pressure from the left wing of his SPD party.
Leopard versus Abrams: tank junctim of the German chancellor
Eventually, the Chancellor gives in, but links the decision to a tie: he only wants to go along with it if the USA also supplies Abrams-type main battle tanks. In January 2023, the more than 50 supporting nations of Ukraine will meet under the leadership of the USA for their eighth meeting at ministerial level as part of the “Ukraine Contact Group”. A few days later, the decision was made in favor of western main battle tanks. However, the German Chancellor had failed to form a coalition of Leopard suppliers up to that point. It seems that “turning point” has so far meant: Germany is not acting, Germany is lagging behind. The USA, on the other hand, has repeatedly prepared further arms deliveries over the course of the past first year of the war – even if the delivery of heavy weapons is controversial. So the US House of Representatives approved in June 2022 $100 million to train Ukrainian pilots on Western fighter jets. The official decision on the delivery of fighter jets is still pending. But the preparations are underway, and the main discussion is about the F-16 model, the western combat aircraft most frequently built since the Cold War.
Why is Ukraine demanding fighter jets from the West?
Unlike with the Leopard 2 tanks, Germany has no say in the US fighter jet, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius conceded during a visit to the Bundeswehr in the northern German town of Munster, where Ukrainian soldiers are now being trained on Leopard 2 tanks. “For the Federal Republic of Germany, I can only say that all discussions about fighter jets are about types that the Federal Republic does not have, so this is more a question for countries of origin other than Germany,” Pistorius said when asked by DW ; “Basically, you have to say that the war in Ukraine is one where you can never absolutely rule out anything, but that probably doesn't apply to our combat aircraft to the same extent.” The German Air Force primarily flies the Eurofighter.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius in early February in a Leopard 2 main battle tank.
Once the decision to supply Ukraine with F-16 jets has been made, delivery will be very quick. Poland, but also the Netherlands, have offered Ukraine F-16 fighter jets if the allies in NATO and the “Ukraine Contact Group” agree on such a delivery.
The impression remains: The USA is keeping its options open – Germany is lagging behind, although it claims to be the leader in Europe in the “Zeitenwende”.
In the spring of 2022, Berlin Central Station will become the most important port of call for war refugees from Ukraine
The Germans themselves are empathetic towards the fate of the Ukrainians – and generous: more than a million refugees from Ukraine have been admitted to the country. Only in Poland do more Ukrainian refugees live today.
And the Germans are donating money: in 2022, probably more than a billion euros from private purses for emergency aid in Ukraine.
However, the German state does not keep up with this generosity of its citizens. Most recently, economists from the German Institute for World Economics (IfW) from Kiel in northern Germany compared Germany's performance in other wars after a year of Russian invasion.
Accordingly, the Ukraine aid from the German state amounts to measured in terms of gross domestic product, a third of the amount that Germany transferred to the USA in 1990 and 1991 in the course of the second Gulf War. With “Operation Desert Storm” three decades ago, the US Army liberated the small Gulf state of Kuwait, which had previously been invaded by its neighbor Iraq, led by the dictator Saddam Hussein. The raid threatened to plunge the global crude oil supply into years of turbulence. At the time, economically strong West Germany played no role in global security policy; it pursued its interests with so-called “check book diplomacy”. Three decades later, heavy German-made weapons are rolling on the front in eastern and southern Ukraine. And Germany is finding it difficult to finally give up the habit it has grown fond of – being able to assert its interests solely through money.