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Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht: ex officio responsible for the issue raised by Lauterbach
Photo: DUMITRU DORU/EPA
Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) has contradicted her cabinet and party colleague Karl Lauterbach on Germany's role in the Ukraine war.
"It is very clear - both for the German federal government and for the entire NATO: We will not become a war party," said Lambrecht on Sunday in the ARD program "Report from Berlin".
Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach had previously written on Twitter in a subordinate clause: "We are at war with Putin".
With his tweet on Saturday, the SPD politician referred to statements by the writer Richard David Precht.
He had demanded that individual NATO states should guarantee Russia that Ukraine would not be included in the alliance.
“Honestly, what are kneeling in front of Putin supposed to do now?” Lauterbach wrote.
“We are at war with Putin and not his psychotherapists.
The victory in the form of the liberation of Ukraine must be consistently pursued."
Can and should a minister tweet privately?
Lambrecht, on the other hand, emphasized on ARD that the principle of not becoming a party to the war »guided us from the start.
And that hasn't changed either.«
It is the first reaction of a member of the government to the rather casual-sounding assessments of the health minister on Twitter.
Lauterbach would not be the first to fall into the trap of mistaking the informal form of communication of the tweet for supposedly private communication.
But that's exactly what he's apparently doing: Lauterbach has had his Twitter account since May 2015. He has published 10,200 tweets since then, making him one of the liveliest tweeters among Germany's politicians.
The self-description of the account expressly refers to its private nature: "SPD member of parliament, federal health minister, who tweets here himself and privately."
pat/dpa
