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Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has come under criticism for pledged her support for Ukraine - regardless of the opinion of her voters in Germany. The AfD and the left accused the Green politician of disregarding the will of the electorate. The Foreign Office rejected this statement. Criticism also came from the CDU, on Twitter
The reason was statements that Baerbock had made the day before at a panel discussion in Prague. There the minister explained in English that she had promised the Ukrainians to support them for as long as necessary and that she therefore wanted to deliver - regardless of what her German voters think about it ("no matter what my German voters think"). .
AfD chairwoman Alice Weidel then called for Baerbock's resignation: "Anyone who expressly gives a damn about the interests of the voters in Germany has no place in a ministerial office," Weidel wrote on Twitter. The Bundestag member Sevim Dagdelen from the left criticized in the same place that a foreign minister who acted according to the motto "Ukraine first, citizens don't care" was a "total failure".
The CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen wrote on Twitter of "sham heroism" because the majority of Germans were ready to support Ukraine. "Democratic politicians must try to convince others with good arguments and not with basta." During the Prague discussion, however, Baerbock also warned of a split in western democracies. Weidel and other critics shared a shortened video recording on Twitter, in which the Foreign Minister's complete statement was not reproduced.
Baerbock had assured in Poland that she stood in solidarity with the people in Germany as well as with the people in Ukraine. She gave the example of high energy costs in winter and talked about relief measures. Conversely, the burden on European citizens should not lead to sanctions against Russia being lifted. That is exactly what AfD boss Tino Chrupalla had demanded in July.
From Baerbock's ministry it was said that the criticism of the Green politician had been promoted by pro-Russian disinformation. "The classic: a video edited to create a sense of the word, boosted by pro-Russian accounts and the instant cyber court is ready, off-the-shelf disinformation," Peter Ptassek, the Ministry's commissioner for strategic communications, wrote on Twitter. "Will we split so cheaply? I don't think so." His tweet was shared by the Federal Foreign Office's official Twitter channel.
The criticism of Baerbock was shared on Wednesday evening, among other things, on Twitter by an account that often spread pro-Russian content during the Ukraine war. This tweet was shared and liked thousands of times overnight within a few hours.
