Hermann criticizes missed opportunities for peace with Russia

Created: 07/30/2022Updated: 07/30/2022, 16:20

Winfried Hermann (l) together with Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann at a government press conference.

© Bernd Weißbrod/dpa

Russia as the sole villain who has always enforced its interests with military force?

This view is a bit too one-sided for the pacifist Winfried Hermann.

However, he has received some harsh criticism for his attitude.

Stuttgart - Against the background of the war in Ukraine, Baden-Württemberg Transport Minister Winfried Hermann (Greens) warned against taking a one-sided view of the role of Russia and the West.

"The military conflicts and participation in wars of the past 30 years do not justify the image that only Russia "belligerent" and "evil" repeatedly enforced its interests with military force," writes Hermann in a thesis paper on the war that is available to the German Press Agency .

"In particular, the US interventions brought a lot of destruction instead of peace and democracy."

Since the end of the Soviet Union, Russia has waged brutal, illegal wars with proven war crimes in the supposed Russian zones of interest, such as Chechnya, Georgia and Syria, Hermann continued.

However, the USA - supported by individual NATO states such as France, Great Britain and Germany - intervened twice in the same period in Iraq, in Yugoslavia, Kosovo, in Afghanistan etc. with concentrated military force and sometimes also in violation of international law.

At the same time, Hermann criticized "missed opportunities for peace" since the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

The opportunity for a new "security architecture with arms control and disarmament, which also takes into account the interests of the former Soviet states and Russia" was wasted in favor of an eastward expansion of NATO.

FDP parliamentary group leader Hans-Ulrich Rülke sharply criticized the Green politician.

"I am appalled by the recent statements by hobby foreign politician Winfried Hermann, who outed himself as a Putin understander." He demanded immediate intervention from Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens).

It damages the reputation of the state of Baden-Württemberg massively when a member of the state government relativizes Putin's criminal war of aggression.

Kretschmann must correct that this is not the attitude of the state government.

Green-Black is in power in the southwest.

CDU General Secretary Isabell Huber said Hermann gave the wrong impression.

"You can't see that Russia had any real interest in a chance for peace - the opposite is the case." The attack on Ukraine in particular follows a long-term plan whose only goal is the destruction of the Ukrainian state.

"It is really incomprehensible when a member of the state government speaks up with such relativizing statements in the current situation."

Hermann is a pacifist and belongs to the left spectrum of the Greens.

Politics, especially foreign and security policy, should not be primarily guided by emotions, the minister warned.

He questioned whether western arms shipments would really end the war or prolong the violent conflict.

"In the end, the peace treaty must also be concluded with the war opponent Russia, no matter what war crimes it has committed," he emphasized.

"That is the bitter, inescapable truth." dpa