German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told DailyExpertNews that the responsibility for ending the war in Ukraine rests firmly at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It’s in Putin’s hands. He is the one who started the war for no reason at all. It is now his responsibility to end the war,” Baerbock told DailyExpertNews’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview.
“The cruel reality is that Putin himself has chosen…to wage a war against civilians and to wage a war against the European peace order,” she said.
Germany has approved the delivery of 56 Pbv 501 battle tanks to Ukraine, a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry said on Friday. Germany’s increased defense spending has marked a historic shift in the country’s foreign policy.
Baerbock said Germany is providing more military aid to the Ukrainian government because “we are in a situation where NATO is in solidarity with Ukraine and on the other hand there is Russia that has made it clear that there are no red lines for itself. †
“We are supporting from Germany with weapons that we have not used in the past because the reality has changed so brutally,” she said.
“We had to change our course 180 degrees in Germany because Ukraine needed our military support; we did everything we could to avoid this war, but it was Putin’s decision to do the opposite and that is why we are now also supplying arms to Ukraine,” she said.
The foreign minister said sanctions have been effective in leaving Putin “totally isolated”, but said there are still strong energy ties between Russia and Europe that need to be broken. “The question we ask about fossil fuels, oil and energy, Europe is connected to Russia. That’s why we work every day to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels from Russia,” she told DailyExpertNews.
When asked by Amanpour what Putin said during diplomatic consultations, Baerbock stated that the Russian president “entered this war with a false story, with lies. … This false story he has told the world is clearly also something he believes in himself.”
“If my chancellor, when others like the president of France speak to Putin, they clearly tell him that he started this war with lies, that he has broken international law… but he is clearly not listening to my chancellor and to other international partners,” she says.
“The few people left behind or around him who can actually talk to him don’t dare to tell him the truth about the reality in Ukraine, that his troops are not as successful as they seem to have been in the past,” she says. . added.
