The German Bundestag has adopted a joint resolution in support of Ukraine with the votes of the traffic light coalition and the parliamentary group of the CDU and CSU.

After days of discussion, government factions and the opposition had previously agreed on a joint application that, in addition to arms deliveries, both directly and in the so-called ring exchange, also provides for financial and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, which for two months has been opposed to an unprovoked, brutally presented Russian resist invasion.

Peter Carstens

Political correspondent in Berlin

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The opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) said that the problem in the discussion about arms deliveries was not the opposition, but the government factions themselves, from which Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) was accused of poor communication and inaction in supporting Ukraine to the question from the ranks of the traffic light coalition, "whether he was still up to his office".

"Clear signal from the middle of Parliament"

Merz criticized the way the Chancellor, who was absent from the debate, dealt with Parliament and accused him of uncertainty and weakness in the discussion.

Scholz' actions are characterized by "hesitation, procrastination and anxiety".

Nevertheless, it is good that the Bundestag decides on a motion to support Ukraine.

If the government had acted quickly, this would not have been necessary.

Merz appealed to the government factions to negotiate constructively about the better equipment, eight weeks of valuable time had passed because the government had not submitted enough.

In the debate, the SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil defended the policy of the federal government, "which knows that it has to make decisions quickly and consistently", but which right now "has basic convictions in principles" and will not throw them overboard in times of a turning point.

Klingbeil thanked the parliamentary group leaders of the government and opposition for their cooperation in preparing the application.

He accused the Union of "small-mindedness and small-mindedness".

Nevertheless, it is "right and important" to send a clear signal to Ukraine and Putin from the middle of parliament.

Klingbeil appealed to Merz to agree to the special fund of 100 billion euros to strengthen the Bundeswehr.

He should make it clear that "the Union stands by the soldiers' side and corrects mistakes,

Criticism from the Left and AfD

Tino Chrupalla rejected the application for the AfD.

The AfD faction commemorates "all the war dead and mourn with the bereaved".

Chancellor Scholz is traveling “to Japan for the cherry blossom season” instead of justifying in front of the Bundestag what the coalition is presenting here.

The application reads like “a declaration of accession to the war”.

The left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch spoke of a "fatal race" to ever heavier weapons.

There is a lack of diplomatic initiatives.

Bartsch said solidarity and de-escalation are not expressed in heavy weapons, "that's why we will position ourselves against it," said Bartsch.

"Nothing comes by itself, and only a few things last," Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) quoted former SPD Chancellor Willy Brandt in the debate.

She called the joint resolution the "Code of Parliament" in support of Ukraine.

The CSU politician Thomas Endl claimed for the Union that without them there would have been no joint application, and possibly not even arms deliveries.

Endl criticized the fact that Chancellor Scholz was traveling to Tokyo for the Chamber of Commerce's birthday, but so far not to Kyiv, not to the Czech Republic, not to the Baltic States: "Those should have been the travel destinations these days."