Frank-Walter Steinmeier is ranked in the category of “who understand Putin”. He had to give up going to kyiv, for want to be welcome.
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The German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wanted to get to kyiv. Failure to welcome it, he had to give up. “I was ready to go but apparently it was not desired to kyiv and I take note,” he said from Warsaw Tuesday, April 12, stating that the idea of this trip supposed to address ” A strong signal of European solidarity to Ukraine “had been proposed to him by his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, and that the presidents of the three Baltic States should also be involved, Estonian Alar Karis, Latvian Egils Levits and Lithuanian Gitanas Nakeda. On Wednesday, the four heads of state took the road for kyiv to meet Volodyymyr Zelensky.
The cancellation of this trip for the German President has confirmed information from the Daily Bild. In an article published on Tuesday, under the title “Steinmeier forbidden from Ukraine by Zelensky”, the Conservative tabloid cited a Ukrainian diplomat explaining why Frank-Walter Steinmeier is Persona Non Grata in his country: “We all know his close relations with the Russia. It is not welcome to kyiv for the moment. We will see if it changes. “
A brutal camouflet
For Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the camouflet is brutal. Former head of the Federal Chancellery under Gerhard Schröder (1998-2005), Twice Foreign Minister under Angela Merkel (2005-2009 and 2013-2017), the German President – who was re-elected in February for a second term of five years – has long been classified in the category of “putin-versteher” (“those who understand Putin”). A label that sticks to the skin since its companion with the former social democratic chancellor, hired by the Gazprom Russian giant three weeks after his departure from the government, in 2005, but also to the close relationships he has always sought to maintain Between Berlin and Moscow for the ten years he led the German diplomacy.
Unlike Angela Merkel, also in a hurry to account for his policy vis-à-vis Russia but who refuses for the moment to express himself, Frank-Walter Steinmeier has chosen to explain himself, Recognizing for the first time, April 4, to “deceive” about Vladimir Putin. “I did not think Putin would lead his country to economic, political and moral ruin in the name of his imperial madness. Like others, I dispicient myself,” he recognized that day on the Public chain Ard, regretting in particular to have been a burning lawyer of the North Stream 2, this pipeline connecting Russia to Germany via the Baltic, symbol of the Berlin addiction vis-à-vis Moscow. “My support to North Stream 2 was clearly a mistake. We clung to a” bridge “to which Russia did not believe and against which other partners warned us,” said Steinmeier.
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