With their trips to Kiev, Scholz and Merz put the war in Ukraine at the center of the election campaign. The CDU leader accuses the Chancellor of stoking nuclear fears and only hesitantly supporting Ukraine. But does Merz do it better?
First Kiev, then Warsaw: CDU leader and Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz set foreign policy accents on his trip to Eastern Europe. Merz used his visit to Kiev to outline the broad lines of his Ukraine policy and to differentiate himself from Olaf Scholz. The SPD’s chancellor and candidate for chancellor himself made a surprise trip to Ukraine last week – probably not entirely by chance, shortly before the CDU challenger.
The fact that even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj is talking about a “Germany Week” in view of the unexpected influx of visitors from Germany shows one thing above all: the war in Ukraine has become a central election campaign issue. Although both candidates for chancellor have been emphasizing for weeks that they want to keep the Ukraine war out of the federal election campaign, they are doing pretty much the opposite.
They don’t have much other choice. World political events are happening rapidly and other countries are not taking the German election calendar into account. At the latest when Donald Trump returns to the White House on January 20th, facts could be created that the future federal government will have to deal with. Trump had called for a ceasefire and announced that he would end the “madness.”
Whether this will succeed or not remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Germany has to adapt to a completely new starting position. But how? Here Scholz and Merz are pursuing partly different and partly similar concepts.
The Chancellor’s Ukraine policy is based on a few basic pillars that have remained more or less the same since the beginning of the invasion. He laid them out in an article in the “Economist” in May 2024. The most important ones: Scholz wants to avoid escalation into a war between NATO and Russia at all costs. He also draws red lines, for example when it comes to long-range weapons. Scholz also always emphasizes that support for Ukraine must not go too far in order not to lose the support of the population. Otherwise, Scholz feared, people would vote for populists.
What Scholz is often accused of is that he only says what he doesn’t want, but not what he plans to do, i.e. what the goal of his Ukraine policy is.
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This was clearly visible in his last speeches on the German election campaign stage, in which he spoke extensively about Ukraine: Scholz praised the amount of weapons supplied – Germany is the second largest supporter in the world in absolute numbers – but did not explain what their purpose was . Are the German weapons supposed to help keep Ukraine barely afloat, as critics say? Or put Kiev in a stronger negotiating position with Russia? Unclear. What is clear is that they are unlikely to accompany a new Ukrainian offensive, as was the case in 2023, when there was still hope for the liberation of the occupied territories.
Scholz says Russia must not win this war. But Scholz does not reveal how a Russian victory is to be defined and how he intends to prevent it.
Friedrich Merz is at least clearer on this point. “We must do everything we can to enable Ukraine to exercise its right to self-defense without restrictions,” said the CDU leader in Kiev. Russia must recognize the futility of continuing this war, but Ukraine is currently forced to fight “with one arm tied behind its back.”