It's not every day that the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is nicknamed in public the "vexed sausage [Leberwurst, literally spreadable liver sausage, editor's note]".
It is even rarer when such a comparison comes from the mouth of a seasoned diplomat, a lawyer by training, who perfectly masters the language of Goethe and has the reputation of being a "very refined" person.
But Olaf Scholz couldn't have been more surprised than that.
This outing bordering on an insult to the Chancellor was pronounced by Andrij Melnyk, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany.
Since the beginning of the war, his flowery language and his rants have elevated him to the rank of "the least diplomatic diplomat in history", according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung or even of foreign emissary "the strangest that the Germany has[it] ever known," according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
"Annoyed sausage", "hole of the ass...", "shut your mouth"
If this 46-year-old diplomat, always impeccably dressed and adored by the media, attacked the head of government directly this time, it is because the latter had just announced that he would not be going to kyiv immediately.
The reason ?
He did not appreciate the Ukrainian government's refusal to receive German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in April.
The Ukrainians accuse him of having favored Germany's conciliatory policy towards Russia under Angela Merkel.
Faced with Olaf Scholz's reaction, Andrij Melnyk wanted to put the dots back on the i's: "We are talking here about the most brutal attack against a people in Europe since the Second World War, this is not a court of recreation. This vexed sausage attitude is not worthy of a head of state," he told German television.
The Social Democrats of the SPD - Olaf Scholz's party - were all outraged, albeit moderately,
regretting the tone used by the Ukrainian diplomat.
But no more.
In fact, everyone accepted that, these days, when Andrij Melnyk speaks, Germany tastes.
The ambassador's twitter evenings have in fact dressed many of the protagonists for the winter.
“You really are a hole in the ass…”, he thus launched to a German political scientist who, at the beginning of March, had called on kyiv to surrender so as not to “unnecessarily prolong the war”.
A kindness that he also addressed to the deputy of the SPD Michael Roth, guilty in his eyes of remaining too vague on the aid to be given to the Ukrainians.
Fabio De Masi, an elected member of the radical left party, Die Linke, received a "shut your mouth" after wanting to talk about far-right elements in the Ukrainian army.
Andrij Melnyk does not have the provocation or even the gratuitous insult.
Every evening, "I wonder if I have advanced the cause of my country or if I have pissed off a new German official for nothing", he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which devoted a portrait to him.
Big mouth of Ukrainian diplomacy
"He is convinced that Germany will only move if we exert maximum pressure on it," said Julia Friedrich, a specialist in Ukrainian security issues and German-Ukrainian relations at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin.
For a diplomat like Andrij Melnyk, this means not contenting himself with discussing subjects, taking a thousand and one precautions to remain faithful to the sacrosanct principle of diplomatic reserve.
The Ukrainian emissary "has no filter and guaranteed access 24 hours a day to any TV set", underlines the ZDF.
An explosive combination for anyone who would appear as an obstacle to the mission that Andrij Melnyk has set himself since the beginning of the war: to convince the Germans to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine and participate in an embargo on gas and oil Russian.
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He does not miss an opportunity to vilify the hesitations of the German government on this subject and to pin down those who, in his eyes, embody it.
He did not hesitate, for example, to report to the media the interview he had, the day after the start of the Russian invasion, with Christian Lindner, the Minister of Finance from the ranks of the German Liberal Party.
The latter would have told him that he did not understand why sanctions should be imposed on Russia, given that the war was going to be won by the Russians in "a few hours" anyway.
"It's the most painful interview I've had in my entire life," said the ambassador.
The minister hastened to deny having ever made such remarks.
Andrij Melnyk did not improvise a big mouth of diplomacy in favor of the war.
"Before that, he was much less known to the general public, but already had the reputation of telling his interlocutor his four truths", underlines researcher Julia Friedrich.
He was appointed ambassador in 2014, after having already worked at the Consulate General of Ukraine between 2007 and 2010. He played for a time the "good diplomat" who does not make waves in the press before understanding that "politicians do not 'are only afraid of a bad image in the media,' he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Diplomat criticized
He then began to express himself much louder, in particular to denounce the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project which he "saw as a preamble to the declaration of war on Ukraine", underlines the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Andrij Melnyk also knows that he is "advancing on a very narrow thread".
His tireless attacks on German officials won him more than friends.
In the media, some commentators call him a "dumb diplomat" who should understand that you get nothing by making only enemies.
The hashtag #returnMelnyk even had its heyday on Twitter in Germany.
“Some of the German politicians are angry with him because they would like Ukraine to thank Germany for the financial and military support already provided. But Andrij Melnyk is there to remind them that he does not consider that enough”, analyzes Julia Friedrich.
The researcher also judges that those who accuse her of being too little conciliatory to obtain results are wrong.
After all, "Germany voted last week in favor of sending heavy weapons to Ukraine. It's not only thanks to the efforts of Andrij Melnyk, but he must have something to do with it" , concludes the specialist.
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