Germany’s Russia policy must change

While Germans are slowly learning that Ukraine is a distinct nation with its own language and culture now threatened by Russia, Berlin’s longing for accommodation with Russia is already starting to re-emerge. Photo: photocosmos1 / Shutterstock

The Russian war is being waged against cities that I know well, in whose parks I met my friends, in whose restaurants I learned to read Ukrainian menus, in whose broadcasting studios I gave interviews, on whose squares and esplanades I supported the EuroMaidan, in whose churches I lit candles for the Heavenly Hundred, in whose museums I learnt about the country’s history, and at whose memorials I stood in remembrance of the Chernobyl liquidators, the victims of the Holocaust and Holodomor. Since 2014, they have been joined by those who perished on the Maidan, by the victims of the downed flight MH17, and by the thousands killed in the Russian war against Ukraine. The Ukrainians always bring a sea of flowers to the places of remembrance in their cities. Many times I was there as well, hoping that it might be possible to drown my sorrow in these flowers.

Misguided policy

Since February, the Russian war has been directed with the utmost vehemence against my friends, against many people whom I regard highly, against people with whom I have collaborated on policy-making for many years, against soldiers I have met again and again in the trenches of Donbas since 2014, against volunteers who joined us as activists pushing for anti-corruption reforms or a strengthening of local democratic structures, and against journalists and artists whose work inspired the Ukrainians to finally leave the Soviet system behind. Mariupol is in ruins, new large cemeteries and reports of massacres and terror at the hands of the Russian occupying forces are showing the entire world that the Russian army’s war of aggression violates all international rules and conventions. What we are hearing from Vladimir Putin and others is precisely what we are seeing on the battlefields. The Russian war aims to annihilate, to eradicate a nation. I am deeply attached to Ukraine. Naturally, I am emotional. And naturally, I also want to talk about the war and Germany, and about how Putin and his regime can be stopped, so there can even be peace.

German politics leaves me bewildered. During the three months of Russia’s war, our government has not managed to extend the necessary and existential support to an invaded Ukraine. And this applies to all levels at which our support is required. Germany is dragging its feet with respect to economic sanctions for as long as it can. For weeks, Germany has failed to supply any weapons at all to Ukraine, while the Russian army has geared up for a new offensive. Berlin is now even stalling the European Commission president’s initiative to finally open the door to Ukraine by giving it EU candidate status. The Germans are getting lost in debates over the ethical and economic dilemmas of arms shipments and the energy embargo. At the same time, they are overlooking their part in Putin’s rise. Today, they apologise for their blindness, even though they were tolerant towards his politics that were becoming increasingly authoritarian domestically and more aggressive on the world stage. Germany’s policy towards Moscow showed no interest in the alarming change that was taking place in Russia and focused entirely on trade. Germany’s hunger for cheap energy and the opportunities of a big market for German products have been the determining factors in its Russia policy for many years under various governments.

This misguided and irresponsible policy toward Russia has hardly changed at all since 2014, since the beginning of the war against Ukraine. Germany’s dependency on Russian energy and the influence of Russian companies on energy security have even been exacerbated. Berlin’s outlook regarding Ukraine during the Revolution of Dignity and the first eight years of the war can only be explained in light of its Russia policy.

It was German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who, after Viktor Yanukovych’s government had shot 100 people dead in the middle of Kyiv, negotiated a compromise and demanded that the pro-Russian leader be kept in power. It was against this puppet of Putin and his anti-European and anti-democratic stance that the Revolution of Dignity had been aimed in the first place. The compromise failed. Yanukovych and his inner circle fled to Russia. And once Putin was no longer able to maintain his corrupt regime in Kyiv, Russia occupied the Crimean Peninsula and attacked Ukraine on a broad front in the Donbas. Russian propaganda about a coup d’état in Kyiv has since been given much attention in Germany. This talk of a coup accompanies Russian propaganda that has used the pretence of fighting Nazis in Kyiv to invade Ukraine and justify the “gathering of Russian soil” ever since 2014. Many Germans never even noticed the fascist tendencies of Russian propaganda.

Unheeded warnings

Germany and the government of Angela Merkel played a decisive role when the EU and western states were faced with deciding on how to respond to the Kremlin’s breach of international law and Europe’s peace architecture. It was agreed that there would not be a military solution, but that the conflict would have to be resolved politically and through negotiations. Instead of relying on a military response, economic sanctions against companies and individuals were enacted. These initial decisions on sanctions already showed how weak they would be in the long term.

Even a Germany led by Angela Merkel, who was often lauded for keeping sanctions in place, was adamant about protecting national interests. Neither of the two Nord Stream pipeline projects was impacted by these restrictions. Both the federal government and German industry were so sure of good relations between Moscow and Berlin that in 2015, during the Russian war to occupy Donbas, a substantial portion of German gas storage facilities was sold to Russian companies. The Baltic and Scandinavian states, as well as Poland and Ukraine, had been warning Germany since the planning stage of Nord Stream 1 that Russia would use energy as a political instrument in its bid for influence and power. All of these warnings went unheeded. Instead of making the sanctions strong enough to be effective in lieu of military support, the exact opposite was done. Germany strengthened the Gazprom empire and became an ally in Russian pipeline politics. Political and industry players assisted Putin in deepening the country’s dependency and providing a never-ending stream of our money that finances the Russian arms build-up and war.

The Merkel government also played a significant role in the Minsk negotiations, which were initiated to stop Russia’s bloody war in Donbas. The Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions had suffered heavy losses. They had been ill-prepared for the war, with a Ukrainian army also weakened by corruption. With the prospect of a truce, an agreement was thrown together that turned the Russian war against Ukraine into a civil war between the Ukrainian army and the so-called separatists in Donbas. Putin negotiated with the German and French heads of government. They discharged Russia from any accountability for the war.

At the same time, it was demanded that Ukraine guarantee the rights of citizens in the Russian-occupied territories, including everything from the right to vote to social standards. This was despite the fact that the occupied areas were controlled by Russian soldiers and mercenaries. Without the Russian military and without Russian weapons, there would not have been a Luhansk or Donetsk “People’s Republic”. The past several years have even seen Russian passports being issued and people from the occupied regions taking part in Russian elections. The war in Donbas was never a civil war but the first step in Putin’s plan to bring the whole of Ukraine back into his Russian empire. Just as Crimea was not occupied because of human rights for ethnic Russians, but because Putin needed the peninsula to gain military control of the Black Sea.

The German role in the Minsk negotiations helped Putin to further establish his preparatory propaganda about threatened ethnic Russians and Moscow’s necessary role in protecting this population. A lasting armistice, however, was never achieved. Soon after the first signing in Minsk, any escalation in the fighting was followed by a stern appeal from Berlin and Paris to “both sides” of the “conflict” to adhere to the agreement. It is an irony of history that Ukraine’s current president made an earnest effort to ease the situation for the people in Donbas, and was lauded for it by Berlin. He now faces the greatest conceivable escalation. The Minsk negotiations and their results, which turned Russian militias and terrorists into Ukrainian separatists, fit seamlessly into today’s propaganda narrative of the Russian war as a targeted operation to remove Ukrainian Nazis.

With both their Russia and Ukraine policies, successive German governments have made Putin stronger. They stepped up trade with Russia and, in the face of an increasingly authoritarian regime, enhanced Putin’s power and put weapons in his hands in more ways than one. German negotiation strategies in Kyiv and Minsk also involved supporting the falsification of the war’s reality in line with Putin’s aims.

Working through the past

For us Germans, the history of the past century gives us reason to assume responsibility for the European continent’s security to this very day. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its gruesome consequences for the region call us to act responsibly towards present-day Ukraine. After all, the ensuing war of aggression in 1941 and the German occupation of Soviet territories led to millions of victims, particularly among Ukrainian Jews. Germany’s interest-driven policies and tolerance shown towards an authoritarian regime in Moscow only aided and abetted the current Russian war against Ukraine. Our past and more recent history obliges us to now help Ukraine, a country that has never waged a war against another state.

We must do this with sanctions and in particular by renouncing energy imports from Russia. We must also supply effective weapons for the defence of the Ukrainian nation. Likewise, opening the doors for Ukraine to join western alliances is a long overdue step. Despite our Nazi history, it was made easy for us Germans to first attain membership in the European Community and subsequently NATO. And after 1989, East Germany – in contrast to other Warsaw Pact states – very simply became part of these alliances. This, therefore, cannot mean that today’s Germany simply keeps the doors to these alliances shut to Ukraine.

While Germans are slowly learning that Ukrainians are a distinct nation with their own language and culture now threatened by Russia, Berlin’s longing for accommodation with Russia is already starting to re-emerge. In Germany, we have yet to understand that it is a Russian war against which the Ukrainians are defending themselves militarily. Russia must lose and Ukraine must win in order to even have a future.

Ever since the invasion, we in Germany have been arguing about arms shipments to Ukraine. I have often reminded other participants in debates that our country was liberated. This then makes me wonder what is wrong with us. Is it that we do not understand the Ukrainians’ struggle for freedom because Germany once had to be defeated, and only later we decided that we had actually been liberated? Or is it that the view of Ukraine, this great land in the East, is still skewed by a colonialist perspective not only in Moscow, but also in Germany? As far as our role in Europe is concerned, we Germans have a lot of sorting out to do.

Rebecca Harms was a member of the European Parliament for Alliance ’90/The Greens from 2004 to 2019. She is a former co-president of the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament. She is a member of New Eastern Europe’s editorial board.

Germany, Russia, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine, War