Criticism of the German Defense Minister for her New Year’s video
Germany’s defense minister, Social Democrat Christine Lambrecht, has sparked outrage over a video message, recorded on a Berlin street amid deafening bangs and firecrackers, in which she takes stock of the 2022 war in Ukraine.
In her message, published on her private Instagram account, which has almost 17,000 followers and in which Lambrecht also reports on her work in parallel with the Defense Ministry’s account, the owner of this portfolio speaks of a year 2022 full of “challenges” with a war “in the heart of Europe”.
“For me, that was associated with many special impressions that I was able to collect, many, many encounters with interesting, great people, and I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart,” says the minister in a barely intelligible tone, without a microphone and dominated by the noise of the fireworks.
In a Twitter message, Ulrike Franke of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR, in its English abbreviation) was outraged by Lambrecht’s video and asked: “Did they lose the case in Berlin?”
“It’s so unbearably wrong. ‘There’s war in Europe’, so I’m in the middle of the New Year’s fireworks. Boom. ‘There’s war in Europe … for me it means meeting great people'”, criticizes the Lambrecht words .
The conservative MP and member of the Defense Committee of the German Bundestag, Serap Güler, has indirectly called for the minister’s dismissal. “There is a difference between authenticity and shame. The Lambrecht video is definitely the latter. He already showed with his 5,000 helmet shtick that he doesn’t have proper communication skills,” he tweeted. Güler was referring to Germany’s criticized decision in early 2022 to send 5,000 helmets to protect Ukrainian forces from possible Russian aggression, when Ukraine was already asking for weapons. “His speech about the war with firecrackers in the background on New Year’s Eve only caps his series of embarrassing situations. Therefore, every minute that the foreign minister continues to hold on to this minister, further damaging our country’s reputation, goes to their account,” he added.
Many users on the networks were appalled that this video saw the light of day, others are puzzled by the seemingly improvised and unprofessional nature of the images. Comedian Jan Böhmermann is already joking about it, announcing on Twitter that “Christine Lambrecht will take up her post as Minister of Self-Defense tomorrow”. (Efe)