As of: March 7, 2024, 4:57 a.m
By: Georg Anastasiadis
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In his latest threatening gestures, Vladimir Putin is targeting an old German fear.
A comment from Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis.
© Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Klaus Haag
After the Bundeswehr wiretapping scandal, Kremlin ruler Putin is targeting an old German fear.
But we shouldn't allow ourselves to be intimidated, comments Georg Anastasiadis.
After the Bundeswehr wiretapping scandal, Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius declared - at least in essence - a defense case: Putin was conducting a “hybrid disinformation attack” against Germany.
And now things are happening in quick succession: Moscow's eavesdropping attack on leading German military officials was seamlessly followed by the attack by Putin's confidant Medvedev.
His accusation: Berlin is preparing for war with Russia.
Yesterday, the Kremlin's third coup followed with Medvedev's uninhibited demand to kill Germans and the summoning of the German ambassador.
Pistorius has – in essence – declared a defense case
Pistorius is right: This aims to divide.
Our country should be driven apart in domestic policy and isolated from its partners in foreign policy.
Above all, Putin wants one thing: He wants to stir up fear and panic in Germany and create a climate in which it is impossible for politicians to continue supporting Ukraine with the weapons it needs, especially not with the Taurus.
A similar attack on Great Britain previously failed: When London became the leader of Kiev's European supporters two years ago, Russia rained down wild nuclear threats.
On TV, the regime's star presenters were intoxicated by how the island would be destroyed by 500-meter-high tsunamis.
The British government remained calm - and so did the public.
With Germany, Putin is now targeting the most vulnerable link in the Western defense chain, and not just because of the inclination of many German citizens to “German Angst”.
With the AfD, the Wagenknecht Alliance and the Left Party, there are powerful resonance amplifiers here who eagerly take up the Kremlin's narratives and spread them to the population.
But the Peace Chancellor and his SPD also have to ask themselves whether, for domestic political reasons, they should really get involved in Russia's threatening rhetoric to the extent that Olaf Scholz and his followers recently did.
Prudence is good, but fear does not make our country safer.
On the contrary, only strength deters Putin.
So let us not allow ourselves to be intimidated, just as the SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt did not allow himself to be intimidated when he pushed through NATO's retrofitting with medium-range nuclear missiles in 1979, despite all the threats from Moscow.
Also because his generation of politicians, hardened in the bloc confrontation, remained steadfast, the Cold War never became a hot one.
George Anastasiadis