Ukraine and Germany have a kinky relationship

Speaking as a historian, my future colleagues looking back on early 21st century European history will have much to discuss at their conferences.

Concerning geopolitics, they will argue about how post-Cold War Europe managed not to emancipate itself from the US but, on the contrary, became submissive as never before. Regarding economics, they will ponder the mystery of Europe’s decline – predicted, much lamented, and yet irresistible. The legacy of Israel’s Gaza genocide will, of course, have generated a whole range of literature about how most of Europe took part in perpetrating it or looked away.

But during the coffee breaks, there will be those moments of nerd humor that only fellow academics find funny, where a favorite game could be to ask which two states had the kinkiest relationship. Hands-down, every time, the winner of most-perverse-international-relationship is going to be the Germany-Ukraine couple.

Why, you ask? For one thing, there is the outstanding absurdity of a state, Germany, not only tolerating a massive eco-terrorist attack on its energy infrastructure and thus its economy and therefore politics (the 2022 Nord Stream explosions) but helping in the cover-up and generously rewarding the attackers, that is, Ukraine and friends. It is impossible to think of a more bizarro example of sadomasochism in international politics. Then there is the German political and media elites’ odd habit of letting themselves be publicly insulted and cajoled by the representatives of a Ukrainian regime that could not survive a day without Western, very much including German, support. Former ambassador Andrey Melnik was a past master at that sport, but as it turns out, his current successor, Aleksey Makeev, is no slouch either.

Recently, Makeev has felt the urge to tell his host country how to do democracy properly. No, really, that’s not a joke: The representative of Kiev’s Zelensky regime has lessons to teach and insights to share. Yes, that would be the same regime which has a leader who “missed” his last election, which lacks a functioning opposition or free media, conducts regular public manhunts to catch cannon fodder for the proxy war against Russia it is carrying out for the West,  and admits that Ukraine’s very, very far right has a veto on its foreign policy (and then some).

What stung Makeev into action is the fact that Germany’s rising new BSW party (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice) is too successful for his taste. By combining socio-economically left-wing with culturally conservative positions in a manner clearly appealing to many Germans, the BSW has recently achieved electoral breakthroughs in three federal states: Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. Consequently, in accordance with the ordinary rules of German politics, the party now is in talks about joining coalitions to govern them.

One of the BSW’s conditions is that the coalition agreements must reflect its demand for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine War as well as its rejection of the current plan to station new US missiles in Germany. While the BSW leadership realizes, of course, that state governments have little direct influence on foreign policy issues, there is nothing unconstitutional, illegal, or otherwise improper about articulating the will of its voters in this manner. In fact, it’s an exemplarily democratic expression of a very sensible position and the support it enjoys among German citizens. The fact that some of these negotiations and the compromises they involve have produced debates within the BSW itself makes no difference in this regard.

Makeev, however, does not like any of it. Not at all. And, unusually for a diplomat but well within the style of Ukrainian anti-diplomacy, he has not kept his misgivings to himself. On the contrary, he has taken a bullhorn to the German public sphere. Turning to the potential coalition partners of the BSW via one of Germany’s major news magazines, Stern, the ambassador has told them not to concede the BSW’s foreign-policy demands, which he decries as “slogans.” Accepting them, he has warned, is a sure way to defeat. That’s ironic if you think about it, because defeat is a thing his boss in Kiev knows a thing or two about, but Makeev is too self-important to notice.

While busy dishing out unsolicited advice, the anti-diplomat from Ukraine has admonished the “politicians of the democratic parties” in Germany to stand by their “values.” If that term in this context makes you fear things will be getting worse, you are right. Makeev explicated his generous instructions further by adding that CDU and SPD “must not” – note the voice of self-assured command: not even “should not” but “must not” – cede ground to “populists” by abandoning their “solidarity” with Ukraine.

Where to even begin? Let’s disregard the cheap use of the big bad word “populism” to scare us all. The BSW is a legal, democratic party. Makeev’s clear implication that it is not is baseless slander. What he really seems to mean by “populism” is that the BSW takes Germans seriously enough to offer them reasonable policies that many want to endorse. And then succeeds in elections; the kind his boss in Kiev is evading.

Makeev’s abuse of the word “solidarity” is equally dishonest: Like other NATO-besotted hawks and proxy war fans, he implies that standing by Ukraine means standing by the West and its client, the Zelensky regime, while they are using the country and people up in an attempt to take down Russia as a great power that is futile, geopolitically selfish and even counter-productive. True solidarity, though, is something entirely different, namely a firm “no” to devastating Ukraine – or any other country – for such perverse policies and an insistence on the search for negotiated solutions instead. Just as the BSW suggests.

But Makeev, in his ire, wasn’t done yet. Channeling Senator Joe McCarthy, he also derided the BSW as an “alliance of Leninist ideologists,” which, to anyone familiar with the party’s actual composition, program, and statements is a simply ridiculous statement, betraying either profound ignorance or the kind of provincial bigotry that mistakes everyone to the left of, say, Donald Trump for a reincarnation of Joseph Stalin.

Makeev also charged the BSW with “instrumentalizing the genocidal war of Russia against” Ukraine. That is a plain absurdity, because while there is a war, it is definitely not genocidal. If the Zelensky regime’s mouthpiece wishes to see genocidal warfare, he should look at Israel’s conduct. How exactly the BSW is supposed to “instrumentalize” the Ukraine conflict is also hard to imagine.

What Makeev seems to mean is that the party has the unheard-of temerity to prioritize peace. A peace that would benefit Ukraine and Ukrainians most of all. If he wishes to see some real instrumentalizing of war, he should look at Ukraine’s Western users and the Zelensky regime that is selling out his country to them. But he cannot do that, obviously, because it remains virtually impossible to make a man see a thing when his career depends on turning a blind eye.

As a matter of fact, every single statement made by Makeev in that Stern interview was either blatantly misleading or conceptually perverse. Not all can be addressed here, but one merits special attention. Makeev insisted that “the voice of Central and Eastern Europe must be really heard at long last.” What he has in mind, of course, is not the voice of Russia, although that country is elementary to eastern Europe – and, as it happens, Europe. For Zelensky’s man in Berlin, the voices to be heard are his, and in general that of Ukraine’s Zelensky regime as well as those eastern European NATO and EU members who have made it their mission to drag the rest of the West into ceaseless confrontation, if not war, against Russia.

The odd thing here is that, for years already, we have been made to obediently hear just those voices, especially from Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics (including Poland’s open jubilation at Germany having its vital infrastructure bombed, for instance) to the point of being physically sick of them. Again, if Makeev would like to see what actually not being heard looks like, he should imagine himself as a Palestinian. As a Ukrainian official representing the Zelensky regime, the very last thing he has any right to complain about is a lack of attention.

Yet, apart from the jumble of entitlement, prejudice, and ignorance, in the head of yet another incompetent ambassador from Ukraine, there are serious issues here: For one thing, Makeev is obviously and openly meddling if not in elections than in their outcomes. Because coalitions are the results of elections. Therefore, arrogating to himself a bizarre right to tell Germans which coalitions they may or may not conclude is just as bad as election interference. Again, no one among the German elite circles seems to have the guts to tell Makeev to mind his business or get lost. But what about, then, the “voices” of German citizens and voters? What about their – to use a term once beloved by proxy war apologists – “agency”? Clearly, Kiev’s man in Berlin either doesn’t notice a problem or just doesn’t give a damn.

Ultimately, this kind of unprofessional and unacceptable behavior will damage Ukraine’s interests the most. Makeev and others from his school of anti-diplomacy may believe that the submissive Germans they encounter in politics and the media are all there is to Germany. Yet they are provoking a backlash. Sooner rather than later, ever more Germans will want to openly tell entitled and overbearing Zelensky regime bullies to cool it or take their endless demands elsewhere. And since Makeev cannot yet actually control what happens in German elections, that should worry him. But then, he does not come across as a man of foresight.