German president unwanted in Ukraine

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will not travel to Ukraine in the end. He is considered “undesirable” by the Ukrainian government because of his close political ties with Russia in the past.

German president unwanted in Ukraine

The plans of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier were thwarted at the last minute. He planned to travel to Ukraine together with his counterparts from Poland, Lithuania and Estonia, following his visit to Warsaw and meeting with Polish President Andrei Duda.

The aim of such a move would be to jointly send a “loud message of European solidarity to Ukraine”. However, Kyiv did not want such a thing, as the German president announced from Warsaw.

This is despite the fact that Steinmeier’s visit to Poland was already intended to underscore support for the Ukrainian people resisting the Russian invasion but also for the Ukrainian refugees who have taken refuge in Poland – estimated to be over 2.5 million to date. .

Cause its pro-Russian past

For the Ukrainian government, the German president identifies with the pro-Russian German policy of decades, as he served as foreign minister and head of the chancellery at a time when Germany sought close cooperation with Moscow and personally with President Vladimir Putin.

The Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnik, also blamed him for this – in a recent interview with the Tagesspiegel newspaper, saying that the German president was not sincere about changing his attitude towards Russia. For Melnik, both the German president himself and his close associates, such as Jens Pletner, the current chancellor’s foreign policy adviser, followed for years a political friend close to Moscow.

At the same time, however, three chairmen of critical committees of the German parliament, Marie Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (Committee on Defense), Anton Hofreiter (Committee on European Affairs) and Michael Roth (Committee on Foreign Affairs) are reportedly in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Poland, to meet with representatives of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Dimitra Kyranoudi, Berlin

Source: Deutsche Welle

Source: Capital

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