German Chancellor Says They’re Going to Have to Return to Peace Agreements with Russia

Are we sure Angela Merkel didn’t just do some kind of f-to-m trans thing?

Not only does Olaf Scholz look like Angela Merkel, he acts exactly like her.

RT:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has declared that peace in Europe depends on the revival of post-Cold War security agreements with Russia. Despite his apparent willingness to work with Moscow in the future, Scholz ruled out a return to the “partnership” of the past.

“We have to go back to the agreements which we had in the last decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe,” Scholz said at the Berlin Security Conference on Wednesday, according to a Times report. The chancellor explained that there was a “willingness” in Berlin to discuss arms control and missile deployment treaties with Moscow, but that building this “peace order” would depend on Russia making some significant concessions.

Chief among these would be an acceptance that “there is no aggression coming from NATO.” 

lol wat?

Moscow has argued since the 1990s that the eastward expansion of NATO threatens Russia’s security, and that Ukraine’s membership in the alliance – which Kiev insists will happen and NATO has not ruled out – presents an existential threat to the Russian state.

Scholz also declared that Germany will “support Ukraine for as long as it takes,” a phrase that US, EU, and NATO leaders have repeatedly used when referring to their multibillion-dollar arms shipments to Kiev.

I hate that phrase.

As long as it takes to do what? Take Crimea? Seize the Kremlin?

What are we talking about here and what is the point of it?

The chancellor admitted that Germany will likely never return to the “strong partnership” it enjoyed with Russia before the conflict in Ukraine. This partnership – in which German industry achieved Europe-wide dominance with the help of inexpensive Russian gas – was scuppered first by Berlin’s backing of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions regime, and then by the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, which preclude an easy return to the pre-conflict status quo.

Germans are very tired of this.

He’s making these statements as if there is some kind of finality on this, but there isn’t. It’s an impasse. Russia is not surrendering anything, and the West is refusing to negotiate at all. That means this can’t ever end.

It will have to end somehow.