Germans may well forgive their politicians for privations closely connected to the war. Recent polling shows strong majorities remain in favour of sanctioning Russia and sending arms to Ukraine
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThe crisis brought on by Russia’s attack on Ukraine this February is of a different order. Olaf Scholz, who took over from Mrs Merkel last December at the head of a coalition of social democrats, greens and liberals, was quick to grasp the shift. Speaking just three days after Russian tanks rolled over the border he declared the arrival of a—a change in the spirit of the times. Germany would support Ukraine to the hilt, he said.
Six months on from the chancellor’s speech, his government’s record of moving from words to deeds is not too bad. Germany has sent money and arms of its own to Ukraine’s government. It has provided further money through theallies have allowed those allies to send more weapons to Ukraine. It is also hosting close to a million refugees. Some 150,000 Ukrainian children are now registered in German schools.
So does an unwillingness to be serious about defence. The part of Mr Scholz’s speech that most heartened his, a goal which the alliance agreed on more than a decade ago but which Germany has egregiously failed to meet. In the mid-2010s it was spending only just over 1% . The anticipated difficulty of weaning the country off Russian energy by the summer of 2024, as the government hopes to do, has provoked fears of catastrophic deindustrialisation and popular uprising in the press. So far, though, reductions have been faster than expected and not particularly painful. As Mr Putin has squeezed gas supplies, Germany has found various replacement sources, often by outbidding other countries.
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