reportage
Foreign Minister Baerbock is visiting Ukraine for two days. The politician wants to send a sign of support. But then everyday wartime life catches up with them – and the business trip ends abruptly.
Actually the visit was almost over. Two days in southern Ukraine. And then everything had to happen very quickly. The project manager was just telling how they were desalinating a million liters of drinking water every day for 200,000 people here near Mykolaiv, the so-called city on the wave that was bombed by Russian rockets, when Annalena Baerbock’s bodyguards became nervous. “Everyone in the armored vehicles. Now” The command was clear.
The foreign minister quickly disappeared. The entourage of delegation and press spread out into almost ten armored SUVs and sped off. Ukrainian security forces discovered a Russian supercam drone in the sky above the solar-powered desalination plant they were visiting. A popular reconnaissance drone of the Russian army, used to spy on targets and coordinates.
Drones – sad everyday life in Mykolaiv
Sad everyday life in Mykolaiv. They had had air raid alarms eleven times the night before alone. But now the Foreign Minister’s warning was valid. The residents know that anyone who sees a reconnaissance drone lingering in one spot should soon expect an attack. The aircraft had apparently located the German Foreign Minister’s whereabouts near Mykolaiv.
The fact that the reconnaissance drone also followed the German Foreign Minister’s column made the matter more worrying. After the drone turned away, the bodyguards decided to continue the journey quickly. The calculation: The column was obviously less at risk as a moving target.
The visit to Mykolaiv ended early because the Ukrainian security forces decided so. The column raced at high speed towards the Moldovan border, while kilometers behind them in Mykolaiv the air alarm was sounded. End of a somewhat different kind of business trip that had started two days earlier in New York.
Kuleba flies on the German plane
“Thanks for the ride,” Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, called out to Baerbock. Baerbock took the 43-year-old to Berlin in the Air Force Airbus from New York from the UN. Ride share? Some were reminded of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement at the time that Western states wanted to fly him out at the start of the war. At the time he had waved it off dryly. He doesn’t need a ride, he needs ammunition.
It has remained that way to this day. And at the UN Security Council on Friday, Baerbock and Kuleba once again explained to the world why. You had spoken about Vladimir Putin’s crimes. Child abductions, rapes, terrorist bombings. Kuleba had cited Odessa as an example, where a Russian drone had killed three people in their home the evening before. Civilians. Innocent citizens.
There, in New York, only a few people knew that Baerbock and Kuleba wanted to travel together on Saturday morning via Berlin and Moldova to the same Odessa, together to the southern Ukrainian port city, which is actually protected by the UNESCO World Heritage and yet from Putin’s bombs again and again is disfigured. Hours later, Baerbock and Kuleba stand at the Ukrainian-Moldovan border crossing in Palanca on that Saturday, the second anniversary of the start of the war. And both report movingly about their own “border experiences” since Russia attacked their Ukrainian neighbor.
Personal experiences
The German Foreign Minister had already been here in March 2022, and hundreds of Ukrainians streamed out of the country at that time. On the run from the Russians. When a woman with two children in the car opened the trunk for the German minister and mother Baerbock, “I had to cry,” Baerbock remembers. Children’s toys. Children’s clothing. “It looked like my family car. I knew then. This could have been me.”
Kuleba, the otherwise sober, doctor of law, also has a border story to tell. Exactly two years ago to the day, on the day the war began, he was also at the Ukrainian border and then, as now, he came directly from New York. “Thousands came towards me and wanted to get out, only my car went to Ukraine,” he says.
But now, two years later, he is driving a car to Ukraine again. “But this time with a friend by my side,” he says. Baerbock and Kuleba. At this moment, more than just ministerial colleagues. Both believe in Europe and both point to the European flag at the border crossing, which is flying next to the Ukrainian flag. “A hopeful sign, actually,” says Baerbock.
“German weapons save lives”
The fact that she came to Odessa that day was a great gesture, says the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, Oleksse Makeiev, in an interview with ARD capital studio. He accompanies Kuleba to southern Ukraine. The Germans could be proud of the help they provided.
Proud? It started with 5,000 helmets. Since then, the federal government has come a long way and a steep learning curve. German anti-aircraft systems also protect Odessa and Mykolaiv. “You Germans can see what it means when we say: German weapons save lives,” says Makeiev laconically.
If the Ukrainians, the ambassador and the Ukrainian foreign minister should still be angry about the German side’s hesitation in, for example, the delivery of “Taurus” cruise missiles, this second anniversary is not the time for accusations. Especially since Baerbock hastily admits that he first acted too hesitantly and then too late. And even now the minister knows that the amount of arms aid Ukraine receives is always too little. A few hundred kilometers from Odessa, Ukrainians are fighting and dying because they are running out of ammunition and tanks.
Success stories from Odessa
In Mykolaiv, two hours’ drive closer to the front, the Foreign Minister stood in front of the ruins of the administration building on Sunday. In March 2022, on a Tuesday at 8:45 a.m., a Russian missile hit the nine-story building here. 37 people died. Since then, there has been a huge gap in the middle of the building, a symbol of Putin’s terror, said Baerbock.
But also a symbol of the resilience of the Ukrainians, who are tired, says Ukrainian Ambassador Makeiev, but also strong. Whenever he hears that the Germans are tired of war, the ambassador has to force himself to remain polite. “Perhaps they are tired of war reporting, the Germans.” But only those who have experienced war can be war-weary. Makeiev knows Mykolaiv. He often visited his parents’ friends there.
Shortly after visiting the destroyed administration building, the reconnaissance drone circles above the Foreign Minister – Baerbock travels safely back to Berlin late in the evening with a small impression of everyday war life. Was it a special greeting from the Russian President, who recently disparagingly mentioned the German minister in a speech? Officially, no one from the German delegation says anything about it. But they would definitely trust Putin to do it.
Georg Schwarte, ARD Berlin, tagesschau, February 25, 2024 11:58 p.m