After Germany’s announcement that it would deliver battle tanks to Ukraine, calls for fighter jets have now been made from the war-torn country. In the ZDF talk show “Maybrit Illner” on Thursday evening, the FDP defense expert Strack-Zimmermann doubted that this would happen.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has expressed a desire for more arms deliveries. After Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the delivery of Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday, Zelenskyj has now asked for fighter jets. Chancellor Olaf Scholz had already rejected this during a survey in the Bundestag on Wednesday. The chairwoman of the Bundestag Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, is also against it. “I don’t see any German warplanes in the Ukrainian sky,” said the politician on Thursday evening on the ZDF talk show “Maybrit Illner”. “Because then you would also have to attack Russian positions on Russian territory so that they don’t take the planes out of the sky.”

Other European countries see it differently. Slovakia and Poland have signaled their willingness to hand over MIG-29s from former Soviet stocks to Ukraine. But as far as Poland is concerned, there would be a problem. The MIGs owned by the country come from former stocks of the National People’s Army of the GDR and were passed on to Poland by the federal government in 2003 for a symbolic value of one euro per aircraft. Similar to the Leopard 2 main battle tanks, Poland would need approval from the federal government for the transfer of the aircraft.

The ZDF program on Thursday evening is actually about Chancellor Scholz’s hesitant attitude towards the delivery of the Leopard 2 tanks. The SPD politician Ralf Stegner can understand that very well: “The chancellor makes sure that on the one hand we support Ukraine as well as we can, but on the other hand that the war doesn’t spread, that we don’t become a war party and that we work together with the ally,” praises Stegner.

Political scientist Jana Puglierin even sees the chancellor’s hesitation as an advantage for Ukraine: Scholz negotiated with US President Joe Biden about the delivery of American battle tanks. The USA initially did not want to deliver them. Biden has now decided differently. Still, in their view, European action would have been better without the United States.

Ben Hodges shows a certain disappointment. The NATO advisor is connected from London. The strategy is currently lacking in the USA. They don’t yet know whether Ukraine should really win the war, he says. “You want the country to be successful and not lose, but nobody talks about winning,” he criticizes the government of the country he comes from. That became clear during the discussion about the delivery of the Abrams battle tanks. That’s why Washington held back for a long time. “That was justified, for example, with the complicated operation. And I asked myself why we then use 2,000 of them ourselves.”

The assertion that the European Leopard 2 tanks are only symbolic is wrong. NATO is expecting a major Russian offensive in the next three months, and they could help the Ukrainian army there. It’s different with the American Abrams. They would be way too late. “They won’t help with the spring offensive yet.” He wants more arms deliveries to Ukraine, including fighter jets.

It would have been a very warlike show if historian and pacifist Franz Alt hadn’t been a guest. The former moderator of the ARD program “Report Baden-Baden”, now “Report Mainz”, had already called for unconditional disarmament “to preserve creation” in his book “Peace is possible” in the 1980s. At that time he was of the opinion that peace could only be created without weapons; today he believes that peace can also be created with weapons. He went from a pacifist to a real pacifist.

He rejects further arms deliveries to Ukraine and instead calls for immediate peace negotiations, also with Russian President Putin. “He’s a weirdo, a militarist. But he’s the boss in Russia. That’s why you have to try to bring him to the negotiating table. That’s only possible if we take his interests into account.”