Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski praised Germany’s progress in supporting Ukraine during his trip to Berlin on Tuesday, recalling his famous speech on German inaction when he held the same position in 2011.
Sikorski, who served as foreign minister in Donald Tusk’s previous governments, said in his memorable Berlin speech in 2011 that he was more worried about German inaction than a possible misuse of German power.
Those words remain true also today, Sikorski told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “All of us in the West not only disarmed after 1989 but also de-industrialised in terms of defence,” he said.
Commenting on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” concept that was unveiled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he called for even greater efforts to be put not only to rebuild Europe’s defence capabilities but also to help Ukraine, which is “under pressure.”
When asked by reporters about his demand for more German leadership at a press conference with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock in Berlin on Tuesday, Sikorski noted the German government’s progress on providing aid for Ukraine – even if it was previously criticised for its reluctance to deliver weapons to Ukraine, including Leopard tanks.
“Today, Germany is supplying or providing a lot of aid to Ukraine, which we highly praise,“ Sikorski told reporters.
In absolute terms, for instance, Germany still comes in second when providing the most military aid to Ukraine at a strictly bilateral level, according to the latest accessible figures from October from the Kiel Institute.
However, in terms of GDP, Germany’s contribution ranks behind Poland’s at 0.5% and 0.7% of GDP, respectively, with Norway, Lithuania and Estonia topping the list, as Sikorski pointed out during the joint conference with Baerbock.
“If you look at this about GDP, then we believe that we are providing Ukraine with the most aid,“ he added.
The figures do not yet include the recent aid top-up worth €7.5 billion for 2024, which will be passed in parliament this week.
With his comments, Sikorski reversed Poland’s position about Germany, which had vocally pushed other European partners to increase their military aid to Ukraine in recent weeks.
Last year, under the previous PiS government, many in Poland raised eyebrows when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Berlin for its arms supplies while at the same time accusing Poland of favouring Russia by blocking Ukrainian food imports, even though Warsaw had taken in many refugees and was Ukraine’s leading ally in the first months of the full-scale war.
In early January, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD, S&D) said that “the arms deliveries to Ukraine planned so far by the majority of EU member states are too small anyway” and called on allies to “step up their efforts”.
However, while Scholz repeated his demands this weekend, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP, Renew) took a more aggressive line at his party’s European conference Sunday.
“What must not and will not happen is that Germany (…) does even more so that others can continue to do too little,” Lindner told the party’s delegates on Sunday.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl and Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de)
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