Weapons for Ukraine: Melnyk criticizes Merz for confidentiality tactics

The Ukrainian diplomat Andrij Melnyk has criticized the new Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) for returning to confidentiality in arms to Ukraine. “Evil Memories will be awake again when the traffic light government wanted to disguise lack of military support in spring 2022,” said the former ambassador in Germany to the German Press Agency.

Immediately after taking office in coordination with Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD), Merz had decided to stop the publication of all arms deliveries to Ukraine. In doing so, he returns to a confidentiality practice, which in the first months after the Russian invasion in Ukraine from February to June 2022 under Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).

Merz criticized confidentiality as an opposition leader

Merz had sharply criticized this at the time as an opposition leader. “We are held up, there are excuses, there is no precise information about what Germany actually delivers. And the whole thing is then justified by the fact that it would have to be kept secret for security reasons,” he said in an interview by NTV and RTL in April 2022.

When asked what he would do differently if he were Chancellor, Merz said at the time: “I would better inform the public.” It was right to keep transport routes for weapons secret. “But we have to inform the public about what is delivered. We have to inform the public about why it is that certain things have been delivered. So the federal government is suspected that it does not comply with its commitments.”

Melnyk speaks of “delay tactics”

Two months later, the Scholz government bowed to public pressure and published a detailed list of all arms deliveries on the Internet, which was regularly updated until the change of government on May 6th. Melnyk, who will be represented by Ukraine as an ambassador at the United Nations from the end of May, was an ambassador in Germany at the beginning of the war and was already against confidentiality. “Right rightly criticized this tactics, not only through Ukraine itself, but also by the opposition leader Friedrich Merz,” he says.

Even today, in this decisive phase of war it would be important to experience for Ukrainian society which weapons from Germany are delivered and how quickly. The publication of arms deliveries would also be a strong signal in Russia and would have preventive effect, says Melnyk. “Putin has to know exactly what the new federal government will do militarily to force it into a fair and permanent peace.”

Government does not want to play Russia in the hands of

In the area of ​​Merz, you argue differently. There, the U -turn to maintain confidentiality is justified by the fact that one wants to create a “strategic ambiguity”. This means that the opponent is unclear about one’s own actions in order to create no military advantages. It is part of the “tactics in warfare” to reduce public debates on arms deliveries, it is said.

There is now speculation about the extent to which the new confidentiality tactics could have to do with the debate about the delivery of the March missile Taurus, which Merz has promised Ukraine. “You want to hope that this new – very strange – line of secrecy could have nothing to do with Taurus,” says Melnyk.

Merz: Debate is “taken out of the public”

Merz, unlike before – already asked Taurus when visiting Kiev on Saturday. “Under my leadership, the debate about weapons deliveries, caliber, weapons systems, and and and, out of the public,” he said in an interview by NTV and RTL.

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