Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned today that there will be no peace in Ukraine until Russian President Vladimir Putin understands that he cannot win the war. After announcing new aid for the kyiv authorities, the German chief executive defended in a government statement before the Bundestag, the federal parliament, the shipment of heavy weapons to Ukraine and stressed that “helping to defend a brutally attacked country does not not an escalation, but a contribution to repel the aggression». He added that “Putin still thinks he can bomb a dictated peace, but he is wrong. There will not be a dictated peace because the Ukrainians will not accept it, but neither will we. Only when the Russian president accepts that he will not be able to break Ukraine’s defense can there be peace and therefore, he said, “we support Ukraine, Scholz stated before the plenary of the German lower house.
In an intervention to explain the German position before the next summit of the heads of state and government of the European Union, Scholz reiterated that Germany will not act on its own in defense matters. “We will not do anything to make the Atlantic Alliance part of the war or to undermine our defense capacity,” said the federal chancellor, who also insisted on the urgency of approving the extraordinary funds of 100,000 million euros to modernize and equip the Bundeswehr, the federal army, with new material. In this sense, he assured that the ruling tripartite coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals is in “good talks” with the conservative opposition for the approval of this financial package for military purposes.
Scholz welcomed plans for NATO’s enlargement in Northern Europe. “Dear friends in Sweden and Finland, you are welcome to us,” said the Social Democratic politician, who stressed that “with you by our side, NATO will be stronger and safer.” As for Ukraine’s possible entry into the European Union, he asked kyiv for patience and quoted French President Emmanuel Macron as acknowledging that the accession process “is a matter of months or a couple of years.” To be fair to other candidates for entry into the EU “there can be no shortcuts” to access the community of states of the old continent.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador in Berlin, Andrij Melnyk, again accused the German government of poor military aid to his country. Although the German parliament approved on April 28 the shipment to Ukraine of heavy weapons such as tanks and large-caliber artillery, “since then not a single heavy weapon has arrived in Ukraine from Germany,” Melnyk denounces in the editorial group’s newspapers. Funk. It seems that “the federal government does not have the will to help us as soon as possible with heavy weapons”, declares the ambassador, who affirms that “at the level of work of the different ministries, also the Ministry of Defense and from the parliament, it is indicated that the Federal Chancellery is to blame for the delays» in the shipment of these weapons.
Although the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, resigned weeks ago from his country’s entry into NATO, his ambassador to Germany stated that this accession could be as fast as that of the two northern European nations. “What is clear is that we want to quickly enter NATO. It could happen as quickly as in the case of Sweden or Finland. It only takes a political decision to quickly integrate Ukraine into the alliance,” Melnyk points out in the interview, in which he assures that “if Ukraine were in the alliance, the risk of a nuclear war would be reduced. Then Putin would know that if he attacks Ukraine with atomic weapons he will have to count on a nuclear counterattack. That would put him off.”
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