Olaf Scholz has mail.

He received two open letters.

In the first, 28 celebrities from culture and society call on the Chancellor not to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine because that increases the risk of a nuclear attack and World War III.

Ukraine should better give up the fight against the Russian invasion (see interview).

The 57 first signers of the second letter (including Gerhart Baum, Marieluise Beck, Mathias Döpfner, Daniel Kehlmann, Igor Levit, Herta Müller, Armin Nassehi, Karl Schlögel and Marina Weisband) advise the opposite: only those who support Ukraine with weapons can do so counter the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin's will to annihilate.

Some, whose letter was published by Emma magazine, hope for negotiations, a ceasefire and that everything will be fine when Ukrainians stop defending themselves.

The others, whose appeal led by former Green Party politician Ralf Fücks was posted to the change.org platform on Wednesday, say every day counts - in the face of "the concentration of Russian troops in eastern and southern Ukraine, the continued bombing of civilians, the... systematic destruction of infrastructure, the humanitarian emergency with more than ten million refugees and the economic disruption of Ukraine as a result of the war".

Putin's goal: "the destruction of Ukraine"

You don't need "military expertise to see that the difference between 'defensive' and 'offensive' armaments is not a question of material: in the hands of the attacked, tanks and howitzers are also defensive weapons because they are used for self-defense." The aim" is "the destruction of the national independence of Ukraine".

If his “armed revisionism in Ukraine is successful”, the danger “that the next war” will take place on NATO territory will increase.

If a nuclear power gets away with "attacking a country that has surrendered its nuclear weapons in exchange for international security guarantees, it is a major blow to nuclear non-proliferation."

It is not easy to understand what the signers of the first letter's hope for peace is based on, given Putin's war plan and how the Russian army is implementing it.

She is waging the war of annihilation, the crimes of which condense into what Wladimir Klitschko calls “genocide”: mass executions, mass rapes, mass deportations, enslavement, erasure of identity.

Will this end if the Ukrainians don't fight back?

What kind of "truce" would that result in, what would be negotiated?

What are we transporting if we do not support those who are attacked with arms?

What happens when Ukraine capitulates can be seen in the territories conquered by the Russian army: people who find their way out of Mariupol are "filtered".

Anyone suspected of belonging to the Ukrainian army or the resistance is shot or tortured and taken away.

Only a few get through, thousands disappear.

Kremlin generals say they 'rescued' 1.1 million people from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Russian army is destroying the infrastructure, according to Ukrainian sources it has stolen 400,000 tons of grain.

The Kremlin, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj to the statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, that the Jews were to blame for the Nazi crimes against humanity, had "forgotten all the lessons of World War II" or "perhaps never learned them".

It is to be feared that Putin has learned very well.

He repeats Stalinism, he repeats the Holodomor, he passes off his crimes as the deeds of the victims.

As soon as we started the debate about not supplying arms to Ukraine, Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that the West must stop arms supplies immediately and thus "can help end these atrocities".

Of course, Putin assigns the responsibility for “atrocities” to the Ukrainians.

Signing the "Emma" letter was a mistake, writes the writer Katja Lange-Müller in the SZ.

She stands by her fear of Russia.

But did the letter have to “call on those who were attacked without reason or guilt, i.e. the Ukraine, to capitulate” and instruct them?

Doesn't the moral fury cloak one's own justified, selfish fear?

Katja Lange-Müller was in Estonia for three days.

She learned from people there that they support Ukraine.

Precisely because they fear the Russians.