Judging by the fact that even on weekends, Chancellor Scholz has to give huge interviews to local public television, he is not doing very well. There are too many problems that he looks at with the smile of a clinical (that is, in the medical sense) cretin.
His fuss is understandable: according to polls, the party "that cannot shake hands", the AfD, this week - the second most popular in the country, bypasses the party of Scholz himself.
The chancellor is also trying to explain to everyone that everything is not as bad as citizens seem.
His interview with ARD was broadcast via Facebook (banned in the Russian Federation), the printout is on the company's website.
You can admire how he rejects all claims about catastrophic climate protection decisions, and, of course, Germany will be a pioneer in Europe, and in general there is a friendly atmosphere in the government. Again, no one asked him about Nord Stream - but in vain.
But what is surprising is that the printout does not contain two important, in our opinion, passages. The first concerns Ukraine: "Ukraine will not be able to become a member of NATO as long as there is a conflict on its territory." "One thing is absolutely clear - and Ukraine knows this and has been said many times: during the war, joining our alliance cannot happen at all. The condition for membership is the absence of unresolved border conflicts," the chancellor said in an interview with ARD television.
But for Scholz, Germany is "one of those countries that consider themselves obliged to work out security guarantees for Ukraine for the period after the end of the conflict."
But, however, we know that a couple of days before the interview, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov crawled out again with an appeal to Berlin to supply Kyiv with Taurus cruise missiles, and to Paris to supply SCALP. Like, this is exactly what Kiev lacks for a brilliant victory over the orcs from the East.
As for the victory, here you can look at the German newspapers over the past week - we will see that articles about Ukraine have somehow quietly shifted down the news and analytical feed. Looks like things are not only very good for Scholz. And against this background, there are again demands from Ukraine and already very specific weapons that can be used to attack the internal territories of the Russian Federation.
That is, missiles with a radius of 500 kilometers. In principle, even an idiot understands why Ukrainians need such weapons. This has nothing to do with tactical tasks. And the chancellor, who, although he does not look very smart, most likely is not.
And this is what he says (and this text is also not published on the ARD website): "We carefully check all the requests that we receive. But for us, there is a principle that I share with the American president: we do not want the weapons we supply to be used to hit Russian territories.
He is talking specifically about why Germany does not supply German-Swedish long-range cruise missiles Taurus. Berlin does not want Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range weapons to strike at the Russian Federation.
This position was already voiced earlier this week, on June 26, when German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that Kyiv would not receive Taurus cruise missiles from Berlin, despite a request sent to Germany. The head of the military department said that in matters of long-range weapons, the German side "adheres to a restrained position."
But what's interesting is that even when the Germans pretend that they are sovereign in matters of arms supplies, it is Scholz who nods in the direction of Washington: "A principle that I share with the American president." And when the "president" suddenly changes - then what? Some kind of disgrace, that's what.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.