“I’m not Sahra Wagenknecht or in the AfD,” Stegner approaches Lanz
Ralf Stegner (SPD)
Source: pa/dpa/Michael Kappeler
If Ralf Stegner had his way, Germany should not take the lead in providing military support to Ukraine. When Markus Lanz puts the SPD politician through his paces on his talk show, Stegner feels caricatured – and reacts sharply.
In the traffic light, there is disagreement about what role Germany should play in supporting Ukraine. This became clear once again in Markus Lanz’s ZDF talk on Thursday evening. Ralf Stegner (SPD) and Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (FDP) met in the studio. And that their factions form a government coalition in the Bundestag sometimes seemed unthinkable during the program. At one point Lambsdorff only shook his head at Stegner’s statements, at other times Stegner could not understand Lambsdorff’s position.
That deliveries of battle tanks from Germany would lead to the war ending quickly is a “hypothesis,” Stegner said. And further: “I don’t know of any tanks that save lives. I only know of tanks that take lives.” Lambsdorff objected that Ukraine had been attacked – Stegner did not elaborate on this argument. The FDP politician shook his head in resignation.
Stegner said it was difficult for him, but the Bundestag had agreed to provide military support for Ukraine’s defense. From his point of view, however, Germany should not push itself into a pioneering role. It is correct “that in military matters we act as a team and are not pioneers”. Shortly thereafter, Stegner justified this with this argument: “In the case of military aid, we are not entitled to the leadership role after what we have done in the last century.”
In any case, he believes that “the narrowing down to the military question is wrong,” says Stegner. Every day of war means “death, destruction, expulsion, traumatization”. And then Stegner said a sentence that Lanz volley picked up: “The hypothesis, if we just deliver enough weapons, he is (the war, editor’s note) over quickly enough, I don’t share it”. Lanz: “Then what is the consequence of that? ‘Surrender and then you are a Russian province!’”
Stegner didn’t want to let that sit on him: “Excuse me, that’s really a caricature. My name isn’t Sahra Wagenknecht and I’m not in the AfD either,” he snapped at Lanz. He supports Ukraine’s military support, even if it’s difficult for him. But the considerations went “towards a completely different place: to the point that we should be the first to deliver battle tanks”.
Lambsdorff took up Stegner’s argument again later in the program: “You said that after what we have done in the past century, we should hold back on military issues in the leadership role,” said the deputy FDP parliamentary group spokesman. “We occupied 100 percent of Ukraine in the last century and Russia about 20, 25 percent when it invaded the Soviet Union.” German troops would have stood on the entire territory of what is now the state of Ukraine. Therefore, in his view, it is wrong to draw the conclusion from the German crimes in World War II and not to provide massive military support to the attacked Ukraine today.
Stegner insisted on his point of view: one must have doubts that Russia, “the second largest nuclear power in the world”, could be defeated militarily “without being immediately portrayed as a friend of Putin”. Russia expert Liana Fix, who was also in Lanz’s group, did not want to accept the “nuclear power” argument: The Russian side had deliberately created a myth of invincibility, military successes in recent years in Crimea or in Syria would have done so fueled. “We have to start deconstructing this myth,” demanded Fix. The Ukrainian successes clearly showed that the Russian army had structural problems and was in poor condition.
Stegner was not deterred by this either and stuck to his point of view until the end of the program that, in addition to military aid – in which one should not play a leading role – above all a diplomatic solution should be used.
Incidentally, Stegner explained all of his arguments after he had admitted at the beginning of the debate that he was not a military expert.
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