Social Democrat Boris Pistorius, interior minister of the region of Lower Saxony little known at the national level, will be appointed defense minister in Germany, we learned on Tuesday January 17 from government sources.
His appointment is expected during the day to replace Christine Lambrecht who resigned on Monday after a series of blunders at the head of this key position, in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
The change comes as Germany is under pressure from all sides to provide more heavy weapons to help kyiv. A crucial meeting of Western defense ministers, around the United States, will be held on Friday in Germany.
More parity in government
Highly criticized after several blunders, Christine Lambrecht threw in the towel after just over a year at the Ministry of Defense, citing a “media focus” on his person preventing him from carrying out his task. Like her Boris Pistorius, 62, is a lawyer by training and comes from the SPD, the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The return of this portfolio to a minister, after three women in this position since 2013, would call into question Olaf Scholz’s promise to maintain parity in the government he has led since December 2021.
As Minister of the Interior for his region in northern Germany, Boris Pistorius specialized in issues of cybersecurity, internal security and migration policy. He was also mayor of Osnabrück, a city of 160,000 inhabitants, between 2006 and 2013.
In March, he spearheaded an initiative providing for “criminal consequences” in his region for anyone publicly expressing his approval of the Russian invasion of Ukraine using the letter « Z », a symbol of support for the Kremlin. Bavaria had taken similar measures.
Boris Pistorius had been considered a potential candidate for a ministerial post in the formation of the government between social democrats, ecologists and liberals last year, but had emerged empty-handed.