Don't pretend that everything has already been said about this war, at least as far as it can be surveyed so far.

We learn something new every day.

In the morning, for example, the FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann said in the Bundestag debate that Germany had watched “naively, ignorantly, with German calm” as Russia instigated a war in eastern Ukraine back in 2014.

In the evening, "Maybrit Illner" dealt with the question of how to interpret what Germany - perhaps not quite so naive, a little less ignorant, but definitely too late - now wanted to do for Ukraine, namely: " to deliver heavy weapons".

Paul Ingenday

Europe correspondent for the feuilleton in Berlin.

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Oh!

If only everyone knew what that meant.

But not everyone knows.

And so it always seems a bit embarrassing when politicians suddenly talk about tank types that sound like Brehm's animal life (cheetah, marten, Leopard 2 and so on) and croak on TV what they think they have just learned.

Luckily, the group didn't stick around for too long.

The person who repeatedly steered the conversation into deeper waters was the Eastern Europe expert Sabine Fischer, who unfortunately cut Maybrit Illner off too quickly.

The talk of "victory" and "defeat" in this debate - in sentences like "Putin must lose this war" or "Ukraine must win this war" - she finds problematic, said Fischer.

She recalled the three pillars on which Western action is based - sanctions, arms deliveries,

diplomacy - and wanted a vision built on the one imperative requirement: achieving full statehood for Ukraine.

That's what it's about and nothing else.

This train of thought, which actually overwhelmed no one, showed how easily a bloated, boastful debate about "victory" or "defeat" can be calmed down.

It had started quietly enough with a switch to Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister Robert Habeck, the most successful political actor since the Bundestag elections, which means only good things here: one could almost think, while listening to him, that Habeck had the rare ability to to talk and think.

There is an "abstract danger of nuclear war," said Habeck, "and so that it does not become concrete, every decision must be made very carefully."

Not a bad sentence!

Of course, Habeck said he could understand Ukraine and its (exaggerated) demands;

he himself would act in the same way in a comparable situation.

But from a German point of view he had to evaluate it differently.

In the Bundestag, with the clear yes to heavy weapons, one could see that the government was "strong, united and decisive".

Nothing but smoke candles

Oh well;

This was preceded by a number of things that Friedrich Merz had already pointed out with verve and severity in the Bundestag and which he at least hinted at again with Maybrit Illner: the SPD and especially the chancellor had to be carried out hunting on the weapons issue (he put it differently, Weapon metaphors are not very popular even with the CDU).

In general, not only is the communication right, but the strategy of this federal government is “not right at the back and at the front”.

And then: “Thank God we have a little more clarity on these questions as of today.

And it would be good if the Federal Chancellor did not again answer questions that nobody asks him while he does not answer those that are put to him.”