Ukraine: Europe offers diplomacy, not guns
Was it too little, too late? asked Ulrich Reitz in Focus (Germany). German Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed this week that diplomacy was “not exhausted” following a visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has built up 130,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders and demanded assurances that the former Soviet republic will never join NATO. But Scholz should have traveled to Moscow weeks ago, not waited until the U.S. was warning that Russia could invade Ukraine within days. At this point, Scholz may have simply managed to be “the last Western head of government to meet Putin before he starts shooting.” The chancellor’s trip to Moscow came after an uninspiring visit to Ukraine, where he offered a $170 million loan but rebuffed Ukraine’s continued pleas to send military aid and troops. Nor did Scholz promise that sanctions on Russia would include the cancellation of Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany that bypasses Ukraine. Ukraine now looks like a frightened zoo worker stranded in a lion’s cage, and as the menacing predator crouches for a spring, “Germany has offered him only a helmet.”
The U.S., at least, is taking some initiative, said Hubert Wetzel in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), particularly in battling Putin on the propaganda front. Washington has been “talking at length about what it knows,” from how many troops Russia has moved to the border to the specific false-flag operations Russia may use as a justification for war. Putin took the West by surprise when he seized Crimea eight years ago, and while the U.S. can’t stop him from sending troops into Ukraine again, it’s determined to keep him from “hiding behind a smokescreen of false claims and unclear information.” If only the Europeans could show solidarity, said Le Monde (France) in an editorial. European leaders have yet to agree on a comprehensive sanctions package and to begin preparing their citizens for its inevitable economic impact. Ben Wallace, the British defense secretary, has unhelpfully riffed on his belief that diplomacy is failing, comparing talks with Putin to the fruitless negotiations that preceded World War II. It’s time for Europeans to stop moaning and “play the card of diplomacy to the end.”
Ukraine needs military help, not more German and French yakking, said Yuri Reichel in Den (Ukraine). Germany, which armed Kurds in Iraq and Syria, now says it does not “supply weapons to conflict zones.” Perhaps Germany hesitates to confront Russia due to its guilt from World War II, but the
Nazis slaughtered plenty of Soviet Ukrainians as well as Soviet Russians—doesn’t that guilt include us? And while Germany was happy to incur “significant financial costs” by reconciling with Israel against the wishes of its Arab trade partners, it seems to have decided that supporting Ukrainian sovereignty isn’t worth the price of angering gas-rich Russia. France, meanwhile, which normally sells weapons “to anyone if it can get money out of them,” also refuses us. Eager to play peacemaker, Paris has slipped instead into its historical habit of “appeasing the aggressor.” Ukrainians will fight nevertheless. And we “will remember this betrayal.”