FDP expert accuses Scholz of "Lanz" Ukraine "shell game" - and indicates interference from the Chancellery

Created: 2022-04-20 11:26 am

FDP defense politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann as a guest on "Markus Lanz" (ZDF).

© Markus Hertrich/ZDF

FDP politician Strack-Zimmermann accuses Olaf Scholz of "Lanz" "lovingly and collegially" playing a Ukraine "shell game" - and describes an explosive dissent.

Hamburg – Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a rather cautious statement on Tuesday evening about German arms deliveries to Ukraine.

In the case of “Markus Lanz”*, criticism is not long in coming.

Host Lanz calls Scholz's cumbersome refusal to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine "semantically demanding".

FDP defense expert Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann shows that she can also do rhetorical pirouettes: "I once said that in the context of Gregor Gysi, who is also a shell player.

You go back and forth so quickly that afterwards you no longer know: what did the chancellor want to tell us?”

Chancellor Scholz in the Ukraine criticism – FDP woman Strack-Zimmermann sees “verbal shell game”

"Did you just describe the chancellor as a shell player?" Lanz asks, but Strack-Zimmermann remains calm.

She described Gysi as such and Scholz's statements would remind her of that.

However, Strack-Zimmermann gratefully accepts the fact that the host insists that it is at least a verbal shell game: "It was a bit of a verbal shell game." she could not imagine anything even among the promised "weapons with effect".

Strack-Zimmermann would like Germany to help Ukraine "more courageously" and expresses a lack of understanding for Scholz.

A "bogeyman" is being built up about not being allowed to talk about actual arms deliveries, and the content of the Chancellor's speech was therefore wrong, after all the USA is transparent about its war equipment deliveries.

“He has our perspective and believes that everyone follows us.

But thank God they don't do that," says Strack-Zimmermann.

Germany, Russia and Ukraine on "Markus Lanz": "Putin's army cannot be stopped with words"

Lanz smells the quarrel: Does that mean the chancellor is publicly telling the untruth?

"No, that's his form of interpretation," Strack-Zimmermann replies to the moderator and adds her own interpretation: "He may see it that way, but I would answer lovingly and collegially that the world sees it differently and that it is before all things that Ukraine sees differently.” In the future, it is also about the freedom and security of Europe and Germany.

Putin's army cannot be stopped with words, "but exclusively by sending weapons to fight them.

That's not pretty, but that's the reality.”

The moderator carefully quotes Scholz word for word: "Those who are in a comparable starting position act like us." Strack-Zimmermann does not want to speak of a lie, she withdraws to the position that Scholz's statement is the same for "a bold perspective".

The defense expert Christian Mölling does not see a lie in Scholz's statement either, rather it was a question of "internal communication, in one's own party", because parts of the SPD still had problems with the "turning point".

The journalist Kerstin Münstermann disagrees, Scholz is primarily concerned with not providing Russia with an excuse to present Germany as a war party*.

The first time since the beginning of the war in the Ukraine – Strack-Zimmermann complains about “Markus Lanz”: “They didn’t make it easy for us”

"The world is rearranging itself, Vladimir Putin* has knocked over the chessboard - in the middle of the game!", says Germany's former ambassador to Russia, Rüdiger von Fritsch.

Germany must adapt to this new situation, "a world of confrontation", and show leadership, also internationally.

The fact that Strack-Zimmermann and her colleagues Michael Roth (SPD) and Anton Hofreiter (Greens) in Ukraine got an impression of the situation on site was not done with the approval of Olaf Scholz.

A person close to the chancellor, who did not name Strack-Zimmermann, let the trio know that "no war tourism" was wanted in the Ukraine.

"They didn't make it easy for us," she says of the trip to the war zone.

Münstermann also confirms that she knows that the Chancellery did not appreciate the politicians' trip to Ukraine.

"Markus Lanz" - these were his guests on April 19:

• Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP)

  – Chairwoman of the Bundestag Defense Committee

• Christian Mölling

  – defense expert

• Kerstin Münstermann

  – journalist at the

  Rheinische Post

• Rüdiger von Fritsch

  – ex-diplomat

However, von Fritsch does not believe that the war will come to an end anytime soon.

A “Great Russian imperial reflex and geopolitical goals”* would prevent that.

The core question is whether Russia can bring Ukraine under its control in the future or not, because Putin considers the country a possible "bridgehead" for NATO.

"And that's why we have to support them," says Strack-Zimmermann carefully.

Mölling agrees with von Fritsch that the war could drag on for a long time.

He thinks "two to five years" is conceivable, which also opens up the prospect for Chancellor Scholz to think long-term, such as offering military training for Ukrainian soldiers instead of just making decisions every two weeks.

Strack-Zimmermann admits that the government must face up to all of these discussions.

For her, this also includes a possible reform of the United Nations in order to be able to secure a value-based order globally, instead of allowing a situation to arise in which “the only thing that counts is: who has the biggest weapons, who is the most brutal?

That would be a tragedy."

"Markus Lanz" - The conclusion of the show

On day 55 of the Ukraine war, the “Markus Lanz” group despairs of the rhetoric of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD)*.

FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann found it incomprehensible that he continued to express his reluctance to deliver weapons.

The defense committee chair criticized the chancellor for his inaction, triggering a lot of nods in the panel discussion.

Journalist Kerstin Münstermann, ex-diplomat Rüdiger von Fritsch and defense expert Christian Mölling look together with the FDP politician at Putin's war in Ukraine and speculate on how the conflict and the political world order could develop.

The bitter prospect: The war in Ukraine is likely to keep the world in suspense for much longer.