German Chancellor Olaf Solz’s top foreign policy adviser raised his eyebrows Monday night when he suggested that Europe focus more on maintaining long-term relations with Russia and less on the specifics of German tank missions to Ukraine. In a rare public appearance, Jens Plötner – a longtime architect of Berlin’s policy on Russia – argued that discussions of German military support in Ukraine, often criticized for being too hesitant and slow, “were driven by a fever that no bigger questions in many cases “. In particular, he pointed to a long-running epic about whether Germany should supply the Ukrainian army with so-called Marder infantry fighting vehicles – something Scholz has so far refused to do. “You can fill a lot of newspaper pages with 20 Marders, but the bigger articles about what our relationship with Russia will actually be in the future are somehow less frequent,” Plötner said. “And this is a question that is at least as exciting and relevant,” he added, “which could be discussed and where there could also be a public debate.” In addition to these remarks, Plötner also called for a more lenient approach to China and argued that Ukraine should not receive “discounts” in its bid to join the EU just because it was attacked by Russia. Ambassador Susanne Baumann and Olaf Scholz’s top foreign policy assistant, Jens Plötner | Wikicommons His posts, which help shed light on the German Chancellor’s thinking, quickly caught the attention of foreign policy news on Twitter, before being reprimanded on Tuesday by some prominent politicians. The statements “reveal a thought that has brought us to this dire situation in recent decades,” wrote Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the German parliament’s defense committee and is a member of the Liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP). , a member of Scholz’s ruling coalition with the Social Democrats (SDP) and the Greens. “It’s definitely not the time to think lovingly about Russia, but to help Ukraine,” he added. The statements are likely to reinforce a persistent argument that the chancellor and his SPD are dragging their feet on historic ties with Russia and fears of damaging future relations with Moscow, in addition to their volatile concerns of World War III. Plötner himself is not a member of the SPD, but his career is closely linked to that of leading Social Democrat politicians. From 2014 to 2017, he served as top aide to former SPD Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the current president of Germany. During this period, Plötner was closely involved in drafting the 2014 and 2015 Minsk peace agreements, which aimed to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine but were never implemented. Plötner was later promoted to political director under SPD Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, before taking the top post under Scholz. Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany had previously cited Plötner, calling him in April part of a “spider web of contacts with Russia” that Steinmeier has been weaving for decades. Plötner on Monday night defended Berlin’s history of arms deliveries to Ukraine, saying the German government had supplied the Ukrainian army “early” and “continuously”, working with “what we can do and with everything.” what can we build “. Indeed, Germany has sent lighter weapons to Ukraine, such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, and is currently training Ukrainian soldiers in Gepard tanks and state-of-the-art Panzerhaubitze 2000 artillery shells. But the heavier weapons have not yet arrived in the country. In separate remarks that seemed to address the US government’s increasingly hardline stance on China, Plötner said it would be “wrong to unite China and Russia now.” He warned that economic disengagement from China would lead to a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by Beijing and Moscow that they would work even harder together. “I think our goal should be to try to reduce systemic rivalry [with China] “as much as possible,” said Plötner, stressing the need to work with China on issues such as climate change. Asked about Ukraine’s ambitions to join the EU, Plötner said there were “clear procedures and rules” governing the process. He stressed that there should be no “discount on meeting the criteria for membership”, such as democratic and institutional reforms. “Just because you are under attack, you do not automatically improve the rule of law,” he said.
