Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Germany’s naval chief has paid the price for Berlin’s pro Russia policy

(Getty images)

Germany’s navy chief, vice admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, resigned over the weekend. His crime? Saying something out loud that many German politicians intrinsically believe: that the Russian president Vladimir Putin deserves ‘respect’. Schönbach also made the mistake of suggesting Ukraine would ‘never’ regain the Crimean peninsula from Russia, and calling Western fears about Russia invading Ukraine ‘nonsense’.

As Germany’s government scrambled to limit the collateral damage of Schönbach’s words as they went viral on the internet, it was clear he had to go. But for Ukraine, his departure is not enough: Kiev’s ambassador in Berlin, Andriy Melnyk, told the Welt newspaper that the incident ‘left open the question whether we can still trust the Germans politically as we used to. This was hardly an exceptional case. You frequently hear similar statements here in Berlin – just more discreetly.’

Melnyk is right. There are many supporters of Berlin’s pro-Russian policy in the capital and elsewhere in German politics and industry. Many of their voices aren’t even quite as discreet as the Ukrainian ambassador describes.

There’s nothing new about this relaxed approach to Russia in German politics

Markus Söder, the minister president of Bavaria – who put his hat in the ring last year to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor – told the FAZ on Saturday that ‘Russia was no enemy of Europe’ and that ‘new sanctions would hurt us as much as them.’ He specifically criticised suggestions of cutting Moscow off from Swift, the global messaging system for banks, using the gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 as political leverage or ‘even stopping Russian gas delivery altogether, all of which would hurt our country.’

Remarkably, Söder belongs to the conservative opposition bloc of the CDU/CSU. When it comes to Russia, he sings from the same hymn sheet as the left-leaning government coalition under the new German chancellor Olaf Scholz.

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Katja Hoyer
Written by
Katja Hoyer

Katja Hoyer is an Anglo-German historian. Her latest book is Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.

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