Valdai Club

The resonance of Merz's ‘ultimatum’, however, has revealed the role and place of the Ukrainian conflict in the election campaign in the early elections to the Bundestag, which will take place on February 23, 2025. Perhaps, for the first time in modern German history, international politics are of greater concern to German voters than the country's internal problems.

Nowadays, the state of the German army can be considered a consequence of processes that mirror those that took place during the years of the Weimar Republic, Artyom Sokolov writes.

Elections to the European Parliament are not able to resolve the problems and issues that have arisen before the EU in recent years. They are structural in nature and go far beyond the borders of even geographical Europe. The transformation of the political image of the European Parliament will be picked up during the electoral processes at the national level of the EU countries, Artyom Sokolov writes.

The escalation of the Ukrainian crisis in February 2022 changed the attitude of German officials towards Russia and its society. There was a radical simplification of the image of Russia in Germany to a contrasting black and white image, without halftones. Most of Russian society has been subjected to systemic demonization, having experienced all the “achievements” of Western “cancel culture”, writes Valdai Club expert Artyom Sokolov.

As before, Germany does not have a golden share in the rapidly failing Ukrainian enterprise. Olaf Scholz’s visit to Kiev, along with his counterparts from France, Italy and Romania, did not shake the desire of Kiev politicians to regain control over Crimea and Donbass by military means. The course towards strengthening transatlantic unity will reduce the room for manoeuvre for German politicians in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

The Paris summit can be assessed as a rather accomplished attempt to give a new impetus to the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Following the victory of Vladimir Zelensky in the presidential election, changes in a number of key variables occurred within the confusing equation of the Ukrainian crisis. This gave hope for concrete results in resolving the Donbass situation.