THE Russian invasion of Ukraine got here as a shock as “nobody would have thought that President Putin would brutally attack his neighbours. If one is to call a spade a spade, he lied to us, to everyone,” German Ambassador to India Walter J Lindner informed The Indian Express Friday.
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All international locations ought to realise, he added, that there’s “more at stake than just bilateral and emotional relations with Russia” as a result of if Moscow’s aggression in opposition to Ukraine units a precedent, “any country could be under the same threat.”
Qualifying his remarks saying he wouldn’t wish to touch upon India’s place on the matter, Lindner mentioned: “There is a strong nation with a robust military which was not underneath risk, no one was attacking it and the chief of this nation decides my weaker neighbour has no proper to exist as a result of this nation belongs to us. So let’s create some pretext and invade, change the borders, violate the sovereignty and integrity simply because we are able to, as a result of we’re stronger. We do not care about UN constitution, bilateral agreements.”
“If this units a precedent, any nation might be underneath the identical risk and a lot of the international locations on the planet have a robust neighbor and there are quite a lot of border disputes across the globe and I feel, since a long time, now we have agreed within the United Nations and in numerous regional fora that peaceable options of disputes is the factor to do,” mentioned Lindner, who took over as Germany’s envoy to India in April 2019, mentioned. He was talking at The Indian Express’s Idea Exchange (an in depth transcript shall be printed March 7).
So far, India has abstained on two resolutions on Ukraine within the Security Council and one within the 193-member General Assembly. On Friday, India additionally abstained in a vote within the UN Human Rights Council that determined to arrange an impartial worldwide fee of inquiry on account of Russia’s aggression in opposition to Ukraine.
Significantly, Germany, in a departure from its cautious strategy on show even throughout Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, has sharply reversed its stand.
On February 26, Germany introduced it would provide arms to Ukraine, with German chancellor Olaf Scholz underlining that “the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point.”
Explaining this shift, Lindner mentioned: “Our experience with a brutal Nazi dictatorship, misuse of military, misuse of weapons, we had a very reluctant approach towards arms exports because we know how arms can be misused… We have decided to increase our military budget by over 2 per cent. It was a decision taken with consensus. We never exported weapons, we always said no. But we have said it in the UN and elsewhere that democracy has its price and we are willing to pay it, which means inflation might go up, prices might go up. But you cannot get freedom and democracy for nothing…Putin has opened our eyes that to keep peace, (there) might have a price so we will do that,” Lindner mentioned, describing Russian aggression as “Putin’s war”.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
