Split
If Zelensky has any merit, it’s speaking out. By showing that he did not like President Steinmeier’s visit, he did not close the doors to Germany or even to Europe, but only to Steinmeier. There is no need to interpret the implications of the words of the president of a belligerent state (whom he doesn’t want) when he says he wants to be with friends. In Germany there is no shortage of friends from the Ukraine, not even in Europe. But Steinmeier was not always such a friend of Ukraine.
Steinmeier was one of the main proponents of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would have tied Germany even more to Russia’s gas dependency (and we know how much of a problem this is for the entire West today). He was among the proponents of a strategic European defense space that also includes Russia. Most importantly, he developed a “formula” for applying the Minsk Protocols to the Donbass, which, if so applied, would have been Ukraine’s surrender. The formula (a chronological sequence of steps) accepted the Russian request for local elections in the Donbass under a Ukrainian law on the autonomy of oblasts, but did not speak of the withdrawal of Russian troops from the oblasts themselves. This point would have to be elaborated separately. But what free elections would there have been without the Russian military withdrawal from Donbass? Coincidentally, it was Russia that repeatedly pushed for the Steinmeier formula to be applied without further negotiation.
“We kept bridges alive that Russia no longer believed in and that our partners had repeatedly warned us about,” said the Federal President after the Russian invasion on February 24. And further: “My assessment was that Putin would not risk the complete economic, political and moral ruin of his country in the name of imperial madness: I was wrong there, like others.” Steinmeier has many opportunities to demonstrate with facts that he is friends with Ukraine, like so many of his compatriots have been for years. The catwalk in Kyiv is the most medial (for him) and least useful (for Ukraine and peace) way. And Ukrainians certainly need Germany and Europe right now, but they also need to receive and meet real friends.