As Russia bombs Ukrainian cities, SPD leaders disagree over whether the time has come for diplomatic talks with the Kremlin. Secretary General Kevin Kühnert warns: The prerequisites for talks have not yet been met.
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert has spoken out against peace negotiations with Russia “in the current situation”. “The moment when Ukraine will negotiate its peace will come,” said Kühnert in the ZDF “Morgenmagazin”. “But it has prerequisites: namely the territorial integrity of this country and that Russia realizes that it cannot achieve its war goals.” The Ukraine is also being supported militarily with the aim that it can later negotiate a just peace for itself.
SPD faction leader Rolf Mützenich had criticized in the “taz” at Christmas that diplomacy in Germany was “reflexively rejected”. But diplomacy does not mean “negotiating with Putin unconditionally or even over the heads of Ukraine.”
Kühnert also reiterated his party’s position that it would “not go it alone” when it came to supplying arms to Ukraine. The so-called ring exchange, in which Germany supplies tanks to other Eastern European countries, which in return give their tanks from Soviet stocks to Ukraine, works “and also helps very specifically and, above all, immediately,” he said.
The FDP defense politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann had previously accused the chancellor’s office of adopting Russian statements when justifying the blockade of tank deliveries to Ukraine. “Obviously the Russian narrative works and is preventing some in the Chancellery from giving Ukraine the urgently needed tanks,” she told the editorial network Germany.
