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After weeks of pressure from international allies, Germany has announced it will send 14 German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine and allow other NATO countries to send more German tanks to help Kyiv in its fight against Russia. The announcement came after the United States agreed to also send a shipment of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. For more, we speak with lawmaker Sevim Da?delen, a member of the Left Party in the German parliament who says the majority of the German public wants more diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. “It concerns me a lot that many so-called progressives in the United States are supporting this line by the Biden administration to push Germany more and more into this proxy war,” says Da?delen.
Scholz had faced intense pressure in recent weeks from Poland, the United States and other European nations to approve the tanks, despite concern by many in Germany that it could lead to an escalation of the war in Ukraine and retaliation by Russia. The head of the Left Party in Germany’s parliament warned the move, quote, “potentially takes us closer to a Third World War than in the direction of peace in Europe.”
Supporters of the decision include NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who has repeatedly urged NATO members to speed up deliveries of heavy weapons to Ukraine.
JENS STOLTENBERG: The only way to lasting peace is to make it clear to Putin that he will not win on the battlefield. Therefore, we must provide heavier and more advanced systems so that Ukrainian forces are able to repel the Russian forces, not only to survive, but to win, take back territory and prevail as a sovereign independent state in Europe.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by a member of Germany’s parliament, Sevim Da?delen, a member of the opposition Left Party, elected to the German parliament in 2005 and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She’s also a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. She’s joining us from Havana, Cuba, where she’s visiting as part of a delegation organized by the Progressive International.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. For people in the United States, they might particularly not understand what this controversy is about, for some people. Can you talk about what the decision means today, the announcement, to send these Leopard tanks to Ukraine but also allow other countries, like Poland, who have these tanks, and in Scandinavia, to be able to send them to [Ukraine], as well, getting them originally from Germany?
SEVIM DA?DELEN: Well, hello, Amy. And thanks for having me.
This decision, sending battle tanks to Ukraine from Germany and giving the decision that Poland and others can send Leopard 2 German tanks to Ukraine, is a historic wrong decision. And it comes only because of the pressure, the heavy pressure, of the United States Biden administration, we have to say. Several months ago, Chancellor Scholz, in the German parliament, in the Foreign Affairs Committee, said it is a red line. It’s a line of escalation, sending battle tanks from Germany to Ukraine. That would cross a red line. But the pressure now was too heavy, too strong from the Biden administration to send Germany in the frontline of this war. And it was the pressure of the coalition partners, the Greens and the liberals — they are actually the neocons in this coalition in Germany. They officially said that they would breach the coalition if these battle tanks, Leopard 2, wouldn’t be sent by Chancellor Scholz to Ukraine. That was the problem.
And we are now in a very bad situation, because I think it’s a wrong decision, historic wrong decision, because it’s against the majority of the population in Germany. According to new polls in the last — in the recent days, the majority in Germany is against sending battle tanks to Ukraine. The majority is in favor for more diplomacy, for a negotiated peace in Ukraine.
And the other thing is, the 31st of January will be the anniversary, the 80th anniversary, of the battle in Stalingrad. And every family in Russia lost loved ones in this battle in Stalingrad. And you do not have to be a prophet to know that sending German tanks against Russia in this proxy war of the United States will have a way more mobilization in the Russian society in this war. So, that means you have the opposite impact what you want actually within Russia towards this war. And this is why it is historically so wrong to send battle tanks.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sevim Da?delen, I wanted to ask you — here in the United States, the mass media are even more warlike than the government, constantly pressing the Biden administration to provide more aid and increasingly lethal aid to Ukraine. I’m wondering: What is the situation in Germany in terms of the media’s impact on your government leaders? How are they portraying or depicting the need for more armaments for Ukraine?
SEVIM DA?DELEN: Well, you know, we have a really extremely warmongering atmosphere in Germany, caused by the media, the mainstream media, as well. And it was interesting. I was, in March or in April last year, in the United States, in Washington, D.C., and representatives of the State Department, of the Pentagon and the National Security Council, they all said that the German media made such a great work in Germany to push the German new government for the Zeitenwende, for 100 billion euro for militarization and sending weapons and arms to Ukraine. And I think, you know, it must be something wrong if representatives of a third state, like in the United States, are saying the German press is working well.
The problem is, the German mainstream press is so much involved, incorporated within the Atlantic Council, transatlantic think tanks and so on. So, many editors, mainly the main editors, or chief editors, are corporated in these transatlantic think tanks. And that’s the problem. We have the policy of interest of the United States. And I believe it’s not even the interest of the population of the people in the United States. It’s the interest of an elite, of neocons in the United States, who are having, obviously — obviously — having the position that Europe is like Latin America for the United States in the ’70s, and a continent where you can do what you favor is what you please. And that’s really a problem.
And obviously, it is a good business to have a war in Europe for the U.S. fracking industry and for the military-industrial complex in the United States. And this is also a concrete example with sending tanks to Ukraine. Sending tanks from Germany and the German tanks, the Leopard 2, is also in the interest of the United States military-industrial complex, because their thesis, if they get lost, the Leopard 2 tanks, the modern — the most modern weapon system in Europe, we do have, in tanks system, then they can supply their own tanks, because, you see, the other thing is, Scholz failed — Amy Goodman just announced Scholz failed in his demand towards the United States to send also tanks, battle tanks, to Ukraine, because, according to The Washington Post, it can take several years, up to several years, to send the U.S. tanks.
So they’re pushing us, the Germans, into this fire, into the frontline of this fire, especially regarding their own interests, supplying their own military-industrial products, and to have the situation that Germany and Russia, for good, have no relations at all. I mean, that was in the past. When you see the books of Brzezinski and so on, of many think tankers in the United States, it was always an aim by the United States elites to destroy the relationship between Germany and Russia. And this is my concern, because yesterday, last night, already the Green foreign minister in Germany, Annalena Baerbock, started to say, officially, we are fighting a war against Russia, she says. That means we are in a war already against Russia. And that concerns me a lot. And it concerns me a lot also that many so-called progressives in the United States are supporting this line by the Biden administration to push Germany more and more into this proxy war and, yeah, taking the risk that it can have an extension to the Third World War.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted —
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