Commander of the Naval Forces (Navy) of Germany, Kai-Achim Schonbach, said that the Crimean peninsula would no longer return to Ukraine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin was not interested in annexing “a small piece of Ukrainian land” to the Russian Federation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine demanded a public clarification of the Vice Admiral’s statements. According to the Spiegel newspaper, Mr. Schönbach was summoned for an explanatory conversation at the German Foreign Ministry, and the Ministry of Defense recognized the need to make a public apology.
Speaking at a conference in India, the head of the German Navy said that “the Crimean peninsula is lost” and Ukraine “will never get it back, that’s a fact” (recording is available on YouTube). He also said that he did not believe in the intentions of the Russian leadership to seize other territories of Ukraine. “Putin is certainly applying pressure because he knows he is capable of it, and this is shared by the European Union. But what he really wants is respect at a high level. And, God, it costs nothing to give him this respect,” he said.
Schoenbach’s speech in India angered high-ranking officials in the German Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense of Germany, Spiegel notes. According to him, Defense Minister Christina Lambrecht held talks with Bundeswehr Inspector General Eberhard Zorn and her PR adviser. The parties agreed that Kai-Achim Schönbach should immediately clarify his words and apologize, and on Monday he should appear before Mr. Zorn.
Earlier, the official representative of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Oleg Nikolenko, called the statements unacceptable and demanded an explanation. According to a post on the Foreign Ministry website, Crimea “can only be lost in the imagination of a German Vice Admiral,” and an attempt to understand the logic of the Russian president “must have limits – moral, ethical, and in the field of security.”