The leader announced before the Federal Parliament a multimillion-dollar investment to fine-tune his army
Germany woke up from its laxity towards Russia and launched itself in support of Ukraine, from Parliament and on the streets. Some 100,000 people – according to police figures, half a million, according to the organizers – paraded through Berlin, while in the Reichstag Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced multimillion-dollar investments in defense and arms supplies to Kiev.
The outcry from the street ranged from simple banners against the war to others with “Glory to Ukraine” or calling to bring Vladimir Putin before the International Court in The Hague. People of all ages, on foot, on bicycles and families with children gathered between the parliamentary headquarters and the Victory Column. Another march, much more belligerent and called by the Ukrainian community in Alexanderplatz, brought together some 10,000 people.
From the hemicycle, Scholz abandoned the timidity endemic in modern Germany in matters of Defense and also the accomplice tolerance towards Moscow. Before a Bundestag with full seats as was hardly seen in times of pandemic, the leader announced a multimillion-dollar investment to fine-tune his army -100,000 million-, as well as an increase in defense spending to 2% of GDP. A claim that Washington had been making since the days of Barack Obama in the White House and accentuated with Donald Trump, now finally heeded. The low capacity of the German armed forces had been denounced these days both by Angela Merkel’s former Defense Minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, and from the military establishment.
Scholz’s battery of measures also includes support for families in the face of the increase in the gas bill that will result from the break with Russia, as well as a strong boost in the development of renewables.
The chancellor thanked the work of his green partners, especially the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, and the Minister of Economy, Robert Habeck, both defenders of the most critical line towards Moscow. He also thanked the Minister of Finance, the Liberal Christian Lindner, for his willingness to open up public spending, contrary to his line of budget containment.
The extraordinary session of the Bundestag opened with a round of applause from the plenary standing up for the ambassador of Ukraine, Andrij Melnyk. The diplomat has been omnipresent these days in the German media, where he has not spared reproaches for the German ambiguity.
There was a closed consensus in favor of Ukraine, which included the Left, which had already condemned the invasion although it maintains its disagreement with the rearmament, and even the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which, like other European parties of its spectrum, pampered for years the closeness with Putin.
The parliamentary session followed the announcement on Saturday of the first arms supplies to Ukraine -500 missiles and 1,000 grenade launchers-, as well as Berlin’s readiness for a “selective” blockade of the swift banking system to Russia.
There was also a 180 degree turn in the German rejection of both measures. The two advertisements once again departed from the green Habeck and Baerbock. The chancellor had met that afternoon with the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, and the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda. At the door of the chancellery, Morawiecki bluntly described Germany’s lukewarmness towards Russia as “ridiculous”.
From Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was urged, also on Saturday, to break with Putin. From the alliance of interests between Schröder and the Kremlin leader, the agreement for the construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline emerged in 2005. Schröder became chairman of the board of directors after leaving office and is scheduled to join the supervisory board of Russian giant Gazprom in June.
Social Democrat Schröder’s relationship with Putin embarrasses Scholz’s SPD. For the opposition conservative bloc, the permissiveness with which Merkel treated the Kremlin leader during her 16 years in power is also becoming cumbersome.