Who are Putin’s useful German idiots
Politico ridicules the "useful German idiots" who for years, Merkel in the lead, have helped Putin: "a catastrophic mistake". The article by Tino Oldani
“Sorry, I was wrong. We are all wrong ». Thus Wolfgang Schauble, 79, for almost two decades alongside Angela Merkel as finance minister, leader of the austerity hawks and still an influential member of the CDU, in an interview with Welt am Sonntag apologized to the Germans for making a mistake , with governments led by Merkel, in maintaining good relations with Vladimir Putin, despite his repeated military aggressions against other countries (Georgia, Crimea, Syria) and the assassinations of political rivals, both in Moscow and abroad.
Albeit belatedly, in the face of Putin's military aggression in Ukraine, Schauble is so far the only prominent political exponent in Germany who has had the courage to apologize. All the others, starting with Merkel, shut up and fly. A silence that does not honor the German political class. And although in the last three weeks, with the traffic light government of Olaf Scholz, he announced that he wanted to change course towards Putin, canceling Nord Stream 2 and sending weapons to Kiev, in reality Germany remains one of the main financiers of the Kremlin tsar. and its military aggressions: to avoid the collapse of its industry, Berlin maintains its previous supplies of Russian gas and the related payments, the latter exempt from economic sanctions. And in Europe, together with the Netherlands, Austria and Norway, it opposes to calm the price of gas requested by the countries of Southern Europe, Italy and Spain in the lead, with the laughable excuse of not altering the laws of the market, when it is evident that it is about speculation, similar to the historical one on tulip bulbs, rightly mentioned by Mario Draghi at the Brussels summit.
To these contradictions of the German leaders, yesterday Politico.eu , the online newspaper owned by the Axel Springer group in Berlin, dedicated an extensive article, with a vitriolic headline highlighted on the home page: "Putin's useful German idiots" . Of all the major German exponents now professing against Putin, the article recalls what they said and did for years in favor of the Kremlin tsar. Merkel's political legacy is being torn apart: “Slowly, but surely, the Germans have begun to realize that Merkel's soft approach to Russia, which reached its peak with the 2015 decision to give the green light to Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline despite Russia's annexation of Crimea and its role in the separatist war in eastern Ukraine, not only opened the door for Putin to go further, but actually encouraged him to do so ».
Another lash: "Germany's stubborn insistence on engaging with the Russian leader, despite his aggressions (a catalog of misdeeds ranging from the invasion of Georgia to the assassinations of political enemies abroad and war crimes in Syria) , was nothing short of a catastrophic mistake, which earned Merkel a place in the Pantheon of political naivety, alongside Neville Chamberlain (the British premier who, with the Munich accords of 1940, deluded himself that Hitler was for the peace; ed) ". If Merkel, argues Politico , deserves most of the blame for falling into the Russian leader's trap, "the truth is that the entire German political class is guilty."
There is something for Scholz, Spd, current chancellor, former deputy of Merkel and her finance minister, since "the social democrats were the driving force behind the Nord Stream gas pipelines, convinced that the best way to deal with Putin was through dialogue endless commercial. Jens Plotner, Scholz's current national security advisor, was one of the main architects of that policy when he was on the staff of the then minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, who is now federal president. Even after Putin had amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Ukrainian border, Plotner himself advised Scholz to defend Nord Stream 2, repeating that it was a commercial project, a pure fiction ”. As for Steinmeier, who now organizes concerts of freedom and peace with Russian and Ukrainian musicians, Politico does not use any indulgence: until the Russians fired the first shots at Ukraine, "he too argued that Germany must use the energy to build bridges with Russia ".
There is also something for the minor parties of the German governing coalition, the Greens of Annalena Baerbock (Foreign Minister) and the Liberals of Christian Lindner (Finance Minister): "Although less responsible than the CDU and Spd for the policies that led at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Greens and Liberals did not cover themselves in glory. The Greens opposed Nord Stream 2, but they did so for ideological reasons, not out of solidarity with Ukraine. More significant was their firm opposition to the delivery of weapons to Kiev, which changed only after the fighting began. As for the Liberals, Politico reveals their pro-Putin attitude until the last moment: "According to Andrji Melnyk, Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, on the very first day of the Russian attack, the liberal leader Lindner told him that it made no sense to send arms in Kiev, or to exclude Russia from the Swift system of international payments, since Ukraine still had only a few hours of sovereignty ”. On Swift, Friedrich Merz, the current leader of the CDU, was of the same opinion: for him, "suspending Russia from Swift could have triggered an atomic bomb on the capital market." Pro-Putin positions now disavowed. But Politico doubts that this is enough: «Ukraine will not forgive and will not forget. And Germany will have no credibility within NATO until there is an honest reckoning with the history of the Merkel-Putin years ».
Article published on ItaliaOggi
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/chi-sono-gli-utili-idioti-tedeschi-di-putin/ on Sat, 02 Apr 2022 05:33:52 +0000.