The German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, departed from the line of the Government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz by saying that Germany "is at war" with Vladimir Putin, to reject a proposal to guarantee Russia that Ukraine will not enter NATO.
Lauterbach was reacting to an idea by philosopher Richard David Precht, a supporter of a negotiated solution, who said that Germany should make an alliance with other countries and offer guarantees to Putin that Kyiv's application for NATO membership would be rejected.
"Honestly, what is to be gained by kneeling before Putin? We are at war with Putin and we are not his psychotherapists," Lauternbach said on his Twitter account, commenting on Precht's proposal. "You have to consistently pursue victory in the form of a liberation of Ukraine. Whether or not that is something that Putin's psyche supports makes no difference," she added.
Precht, a philosopher who has become known for popular books and for a television program on current issues seen from philosophy, had said that surely the gesture of promising that Ukraine would not join NATO would serve to appease the spirits and would open the way to possible negotiations.
With his reaction, Lauterbach went much further than the other members of the Government had gone, who have avoided even expressly defining the Ukrainian victory as an objective and have underlined the need to prevent the conflict from spreading.
Scholz, questioned about whether the goal is for Ukraine to win the war, has on several occasions taken refuge in the formula that "Russia must not win the war" which until now seemed to be the official discourse of the Government.
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock have been reluctant about Ukraine's NATO application. Lambrecht said that she understands the Ukrainian wish but that certain conditions are required and that NATO cannot become a party to the war.
Baerbock, for his part, affirmed that Ukraine will continue to be supported in its right to defense but that the war must be prevented from spreading to other countries. "We have a responsibility to prevent the war from spreading to other countries," said Baerbock, who currently sees no possibility of Ukraine's rapid entry into NATO.
After the beginning of the war, Scholz announced a radical increase in German military spending with the creation of a special fund of 100,000 million euros for defense spending. Germany also has an energy challenge with the war due to the high dependence on Russian gas that had been created for years.
