Marina Weisband has been in contact with her family in Ukraine since five in the morning. They are doing well so far, the Greens politician assures in the evening on the Maybrit Illner program. They’re at home, they can’t leave the city anyway, she says. Weisband is connected from Münster. From a distance she had to watch like all of us this Tuesday as Russian forces invaded her native country.
Weisband tells of acquaintances who spent the morning in subway shafts to get to safety from the explosions. “We know of villages near the Belarusian border,” she says, where people were under such heavy fire that parents “literally lay over their children” in the basement.
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Illner invited to a special that evening, “Maybrit illner Ukraine Special”. In two parts, interrupted by a ZDF special on the situation in the country, in addition to Weisband are Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens), SPD Chairman Lars Klingbeil, the head of the “Spiegel” capital city office Melanie Amann, and the retired German Brigadier General Erich Vad and the chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke and former foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel to talk about the war in Ukraine.
Weisband, who was born in Kiev, tells of young men who enlist for military service. Not only for the front, but also for neighborhood help. Even there, she says, people are digging trenches to defend themselves.
“If Putin expects Ukraine to capitulate quickly, then I think he has reckoned without the Ukrainian people.”
No one in her immediate circle of acquaintances wants to leave Ukraine, she says. One wants to defend the democratic country in order to be able to return.
“I think Putin’s goal is to set up a pro-Russian government and show that a democratic country cannot exist alongside Russia,” says the Green politician.
Vad, who was Chancellor Angela Merkel’s military policy adviser from 2006 to 2013, does not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to occupy all of Ukraine permanently. “He will have to take Kiev,” but may later withdraw from Kiev and western Ukraine.
Weisband believes Putin will go further. “Putin is more afraid of nothing than his own people infecting himself with this idea of democracy and ending their own kleptocracy,” she says.
That’s why the president isn’t just fighting to rebuild a Russian empire, “he’s fighting democracy itself.” He tried to destabilize them in the USA, in Europe and in Ukraine. He cannot allow “a successful, modern, democratic state to prosper alongside him”.
Was the German traffic light government too hesitant then, asks Illner. Yes, thinks Weisband. However, she was positively surprised at the clear words and sanctions that the separatist-led regions used to react to Putin’s recognition.
Even if she would have liked the people who make Putin’s actions possible to be deterred earlier and more quickly.
More on the Russian attack on Ukraine at Tagesspiegel Plus:
Klingbeil defends the policy of the traffic light government. “We’re not just watching,” says the SPD leader, “we’ve strengthened the resilience of the Ukrainians.” Illner draws his attention to the fact that people in Ukraine don’t see it that way. It’s hard to argue when tanks roll down the street, Klingbeil admits.
Illner quotes Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said Putin will not win this war. Former Brigadier General Vad sees things differently. “Putin will win this war,” he is certain.
Russia’s armed forces are modern, well equipped, vastly superior to Ukraine and in a strategic base against which one cannot defend oneself. From a military point of view, things went well, says the general dryly. In his estimation, in a few days.
At this point, Klingbeil draws attention to “the long term”. NATO is stronger than it has been for a long time, and the security policy debate in Germany will change fundamentally, he says. “What does that mean?” Illner asks.
“If military conflicts take place two hours away from Berlin, we will look at the value of security very differently. In the firm conviction that we must also spend more money on the Bundeswehr,” replies Klingbeil. Vad nods. According to the SPD politician, the concept of trade instead of change had failed.
The idea didn’t just die this evening, Habeck says later, but in recent years. In the program, the Federal Minister of Economics repeats what he has already said in other appearances: energy policy is also security policy.
Last year, Habeck called for defensive weapons for Ukraine, Illner recalled elsewhere. “Did the Greens carry the Social Democrat-led government to the hunt?” the moderator asks the Greens politician Weisband.
“I’d hate to delve into the underbelly of partisan politics right now on this day,” Weisband replies. Overall, Germany acted too late in terms of defensive weapons.
There would be enough people in this conflict who would have missed something – and have been for eight years. But only one person is to blame for this conflict, she says, and that’s President Putin.
