On Russian state television, a woman turns the hand of a symbolic doomsday clock. It is intended to show how high the current risk of nuclear war is. “We are now ten seconds closer to a nuclear escalation,” says the moderator. The reason is the tank deliveries that Western countries promised Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday.
After much hesitation, Chancellor Scholz decided on Tuesday to deliver 14 main battle tanks to Ukraine to defend against Russia. Several European countries are following suit and the USA also announced the delivery of 31 tanks on Wednesday.
While the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy thanks the Chancellor and his Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba calls on Twitter for all allied states to join the “tank coalition”, Russia is indignant.
“If they were seriously afraid of an escalation, they would have thought about it 1,000 times more often,” says the moderator on Russian television. “The tanks are offensive weapons, they are attack weapons. This is a move towards nuclear doomsday.” This is evident in a clip on Twitter, translated by journalist Julia Davis:
While state television responded to the tank delivery with threats of nuclear war, the Russian president remained silent. During a visit to the State University in Moscow, Putin instead spent more than an hour answering questions from students about lost dogs or quantum technology.
The war in Ukraine is only a side issue: some Western countries would use Ukraine to want to wipe out Russian culture. Strictly speaking, Germany is still occupied by the United States, says Putin. He does not address the issue of tank delivery.
Sharp criticism from the Foreign Ministry
However, his Foreign Ministry sharply criticized Germany’s Leopard decision. This is tantamount to a “pre-planned war” against Russia, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova scolded on Wednesday.
The Russian embassy in Berlin is also outraged: “Berlin’s decision to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv is extremely dangerous because it takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation,” Ambassador Sergei Nechayev said on Wednesday, according to a press release.
The decision contradicts the announcements by German politicians that they do not want to be drawn into the conflict.
Germany and its western partners are not interested in a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Rather, it relies on escalation, criticized Netchayev.
“Berlin’s decision means a definitive turning away from the Federal Republic of Germany’s admission of historical responsibility towards our people for the terrible, non-statute-barred crimes of Nazism in the Great Patriotic War,” said the 69-year-old.
According to Nechayev, German tanks would again be sent to the “Eastern Front”, which meant the deaths not only of Russian soldiers but also of the civilian population. (Tsp, Reuters, dpa)
To home page
