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Germany will not give military assistance to Ukraine despite Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's request, Germany's foreign minister said Tuesday.
Zelenskyy acknowledged German Chancellor Angela Merkel's support for his country but said "Germany can do more," during an interview with the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Tuesday. He also said Germany has not provided his country with military help but that it could, citing Germany's "great" ships, speedboats, missile speedboats and patrol boats amid his country's ongoing conflict with Russia-backed separatist rebels in Ukraine.
"I am convinced that the conflict can only be solved by political channels, and that should be clear to all involved," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said to reporters after Zelenskyy's comments were made. "This remains the guiding principle of our engagement, and it won't change — weapons deliveries don't help in this."
During Zelenskyy's interview with the German newspaper, he pointed to comments made by Germany's opposition Green party leader Robert Habeck during a visit to Ukraine who said "from my point of view, it is hard for us to deny Ukraine weapons for defense, for self-defense."
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:
Germany, along with France, has led Western diplomatic efforts to resolve the long-running conflict between Kyiv and Russia-backed separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. But efforts toward a political settlement are stalled.
Zelenskyy was quoted in an interview Tuesday that Chancellor Angela Merkel has done a lot for Ukraine but "of course I had hoped for more from her, particularly in the Normandy format" of four-way talks between Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France.
Habeck's comments drew widespread criticism in Germany in an election year, not least from his own party, which has pacifist roots.
Maas firmly rejected the idea of weapons deliveries, while highlighting Germany's support for Ukraine in diplomacy and in bilateral aid.
Ukraine also strongly opposes the completion of a new Russian-built natural gas pipeline to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The Nord Stream 2 project also is opposed by Habeck's Greens and by the United States, but the Biden administration opted last month not to punish the company overseeing the project even while announcing new sanctions against Russian companies and ships. The move eased a long-running irritant in German-U.S. relations.
Germany's Funke newspaper group reported Tuesday that a German delegation including two top Merkel advisers traveled to Washington this week for talks expected to include the pipeline issue.
Maas said Germany had made clear that it has "an interest in finding a common way" forward.
"That will now be the subject of talks in Washington, and I am confident that we will succeed in finding a way," he said. "This certainly won't be easy, and possibly won't be the case overnight, but we are counting on dialogue with officials in Washington as we did in the past, and we will continue that."
