Firmly on the side of Kiev?
Yes, while watching.
Firmly on Kiev's side, the German government watches the Russian slaughter in Ukraine.
It's about the fact that this is the case, about determining the sheer situation, being able to endure it psychologically instead of looking for relief in a rhetoric that jumps over the edge.
Members of the German government now have to do this: to stand firmly at the side of those who suffer, to whose defense they do nothing, whose suffering they allow to happen.
In fact, it is of little use at this moment to tap the situation of mere spectatorship for its alternatives in the past, for its lessons for the future.
At the moment, such discussions are little more than this: leapfrog rhetoric, with which German government members would like to skip over the Ukrainians who fear for their lives and escape an intolerable present two hours by plane from Berlin.
But how then to fill the vacuum of inaction in which the viewers are threatened with suffocation?
Olaf Scholz set the tone here when he declared that Putin would not win this war.
With that, an inappropriately idealistic level had entered the house of death that Putin is making of Ukraine these hours, as if values (consciousness of freedom, courage) could be counted against human lives.
When will the end come?
When Robert Habeck was asked on television what it means when the chancellor says that Putin will not win this war, the vice chancellor switched from military to the realm of values.
As if the suffering of the Ukrainians, which the federal government is watching, can be alleviated by the fact that the Ukrainian "victim walk" (Habeck) is distinguished as the morally superior position compared to the low calculation of the dictatorial butchers.
With the choice of the high tone, this encouragement sounded careless if not cynical in the middle of the carnage: "In the end," said Habeck, "in the end, people will always be overwhelmed with their hopes, with their courage, with their striving for freedom dictators win.
The tragedy is that this 'end' sometimes takes a little longer.”
How to avoid the reading: If the sacrifice is longer than expected, then the sacrifice is not in vain?
Is that the eschatological consolation with which a German government politician should exaggerate the suffering of the Ukrainians?
While at the same time admitting: "We can't really help Ukraine, and we're not helping her either." Shouldn't Habeck have left it at that bleak conclusion?
Or how Christian Lindner can confidently say: Our answer to Russia is a legal one, not a military one?
It could have been skipped more elegantly that our government has no answer to the butcher Putin.