The situation in the morning: the end of naivety

Today it's about German politicians who remorsefully face the second day of the war in Europe.

And the question: How determined are you really?

Everything at the beginning

On Sunday from 11 a.m. the Bundestag will hold a special session.

will

issue a half-hour government statement on the German reaction to the war against Ukraine started by Russia.

This is followed by a two-and-a-half-hour debate between the parliamentary groups.

In the past 24 hours, a change

could be observed

It must be said at the outset that many of its protagonists were deeply influenced by the end of the Cold War after 1989.

The average age of the new government is 50 years.

Anyone who is 50 years old today just became an adult when the Wall came down.

The end of the Cold War, however, led to a naïve thought: to have arrived at the "end of history" and to look forward to a time when liberalism and with it democracy would prevail.

It has long been known that this was indeed naïve.

The two decades that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were already extremely complicated.

Now, at the beginning of the 1920s, an

is growing .

These 1920s began with a global pandemic that is far from over.

While the countries of the world shouldn't really be busy with anything other than fighting the consequences of climate change, there is now war in Europe.

.

Yesterday,

, many politicians in Germany were

.

Much of what was said seemed to spring from a fierce resolution to

afford to be naïve.

In the ZDF interview, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock

(Greens) attested to Putin's

and repeatedly expressed her anger that her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov had "

to him".

Scholz, for his part, was lied to by the Russian President, said the Minister.

The chancellor, who returned from Moscow last week with a certain hope that he had brought about a positive turn there, made it clear in his television speech yesterday: "This war is Putin's war." combat operations." And: "We are determined and acting as one.

Putin will not win.«

These are new tones

.

Only recently Baerbock had said the sentence: "Those who talk don't shoot." Well, she and Scholz talked a lot and trusted diplomacy.

It has to be admitted that they really gave their all here.

But the shots are fired anyway.

In early summer, Baerbock, as a candidate for chancellor, called off her then co-party leader

when he said on a trip to the Ukrainian contact line that Germany should not deny Ukraine any defensive weapons.

Whether arms deliveries from Germany to Ukraine are the right means is still up for debate.

But after Baerbock's word of power, a debate never took place.

The German media also let this opportunity slip by.

Such a debate would most likely not have changed anything about Putin's plans, but it would certainly have been noticed in the Kremlin.

And politics and the public would be completely different today, the arguments would be sharper.

The German public is only now beginning to understand who it is dealing with in the Kremlin.

In other respects, too, people

that there would be no more war in Europe.

"I'm so angry at us because we've failed historically," wrote former Defense Minister

(CDU) on Twitter yesterday.

After the conflicts in Georgia, Crimea and Donbass, nothing had been prepared that "really deterred" Putin.

Kramp-Karrenbauer went on to write: "We have forgotten the lesson of Schmidt and Kohl that negotiations always come first, but you have to be so strong militarily that non-negotiation cannot be an option for the other side." In other words: the Bundeswehr is not in good condition.

So a lot happened there that, in retrospect, you really have to say that it was

.

Above all,

has made itself

far too

Is Germany too hesitant?

But is the new harshness that was often expressed really believable?

At yesterday's crisis meeting of EU heads of state and government, Germany and Italy were among the countries that put the brakes on the idea of ​​excluding Russia from the Swift international payment system.

There are plausible arguments for this attitude, too, but it carries the risk that the German government will again be perceived by its allies as

.

In the Baltic states in particular, any hesitation is feared, since there is a real danger of a conflict

.

A state of emergency is already in force in the NATO member state of Lithuania.

Yesterday, Annalena Baerbock emphasized in the ZDF interview that the dismay at Putin should not lead to the western side losing their heads and breaking international law.

That's the right approach.

must be put in place against the irrational and bloodthirsty actions of the Kremlin chief

.

German politicians must stop seeing the Kremlin boss as a partner with whom they can negotiate.

In the long term, too, it must abandon the idea that change is possible through trade.

Above all, it must do everything, really everything, to become more independent in terms of energy policy.

Important signals to the Russian people

And: German politicians have to be

.

If the impression is not deceptive, many of them are aware of it.

Yesterday it seemed as if they were careful not to address Russia as the aggressor, but only Putin.

It's good.

Because the Russian people are not our enemy, we are not entitled to do that after 1945.

Enmity shouldn't be a category in our thinking anyway.

It's bad enough that the Russians are hanging along with their ruler, are being held captive.

That they will go to war for him and suffer the consequences of the sanctions.

In a dictatorship, and there is no other way to describe Russia, it is life-threatening to rise up against the ruler.

Russians need a clear signal from German politicians that the ostracism only applies to a single person and their environment and that they deserve

should they dare to oppose him.

• The SPIEGEL cover story: The attack that changed the world

The latest news from the night

• Lindner demands more money for the Bundeswehr:

  Christian Lindner is also in favor of increasing defense spending in view of the escalation in Ukraine.

  The German armed forces had been "managed for years to wear out."

• President Zelenskyj orders general mobilization in Ukraine:

  Because of Russia's "military aggression" reservists and conscripts from all over the country are to be mobilized in Ukraine within 90 days

• International nuclear agency worried about battles near Chernobyl:

  The Ukrainian government warns Europe of the possible dangers of the battle around the reactor.

  And the nuclear authority urges a "maximum of restraint."

The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today

• Long delivery times: The e-car bottleneck - and how buyers can avoid it

• Test drives with the new racing cars in Formula 1: »Sluggish like a truck«

• Three-year-old girl on skis is celebrated on social media: "I'm a crazy girl"

I wish you a good start into the day.

Yours, Susanne Beyer