15 May / 2024
Many Germans perceive the Russian-Ukrainian war as a regional conflict that does not concern Western Europe, but this does not affect support for Ukraine. Andreas Umland, a German political scientist and analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, shared this opinion on the air of the FREEDOM TV channel.
“In Germany, this is unjustified, of course, they do not consider this war to be their conflict. Many people still see this as a regional conflict between Russia and Ukraine, while in the Baltic countries, of course, this is understood as a conflict that concerns their own national interests. This, I think, in all Western European countries. So they still consider this conflict not belonging to Western Europe,” he said.
At the same time, Umland stressed that Germany supports Ukraine by providing military and humanitarian assistance.
“And for Germany, I often try to explain this to the Ukrainian media, this area of cooperation is military-technical cooperation of this kind, geopolitical conflicts are a new area of foreign policy, which we did not do before until February of this year. Therefore, everything is stalling and slowly, zigzags, but this does not express any anti-Ukrainian and not even pro-Russian position, ”the political scientist explained.
He also noted that anti-government rallies in Germany, joined by pro-Russian or Russian demonstrators, are more related to internal problems in the country. Umland does not exclude that these protests have Russian authors.
“But I wouldn’t overestimate these demonstrations either … Still, if you look at how many people are participating, it’s not all that significant. Ultimately, this is a rather small part of German society. And, of course, there is also the Russian diaspora, which is under the influence of Russian propaganda, which supports it there, ”the political scientist said.
