{"id":387774,"date":"2025-08-31T20:28:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T20:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/387774\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T20:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T20:28:15","slug":"germanys-merz-preparing-for-long-war-in-ukraine-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/387774\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Merz preparing for long war in Ukraine \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week Merz had expressed skepticism<\/a> that U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s ongoing peace push with Russian President Vladimir Putin would yield results.<\/p>\n

“I would like the United States of America to work with us to solve this problem for as long as possible,” Merz said. “Diplomacy isn’t about flipping a switch overnight and then everything will be fine again. It’s a lengthy process.”<\/p>\n

Asked about security guarantees \u2014 intended to protect Ukraine from another Russian attack in case of a peace agreement\u00a0\u2014 Merz said: “The number one priority is supporting the Ukrainian army so that they can defend this country in the long term. That is the absolute priority, and we will begin doing that now.”<\/p>\n

When pressed as to whether Germany would be ready to send troops to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, Merz stressed that every foreign troop deployment required Bundestag approval. He did not specify what a German deployment could look like or whether he supported such a step.<\/p>\n

\"\"Germany has struggled to recruit and train battle-ready soldiers. | Pool Photo by Daniel Bockwoldt via EPA<\/p>\n

Despite a huge expansion in military spending,\u00a0Germany has struggled to recruit and train battle-ready soldiers<\/a>, with troop levels flatlining at around 182,000 despite significant efforts to grow the force.<\/p>\n

During Sunday’s interview Merz defended his coalition’s historic decision to loosen the debt brake on defense spending<\/a> \u2014 made possible by an unexpected U-turn by Merz’s conservatives right after the election \u2014 and even went so far as to link it to NATO’s survival.<\/p>\n

“We were essentially able to preserve NATO with our decision,” he said. <\/p>\n

“I was at the NATO summit in The Hague<\/a> [June 24-25]. If we hadn’t changed the constitution and we hadn’t been willing to allow the Federal Republic of Germany to spend 3.5 percent on defense plus 1.5 percent on the necessary infrastructure, then NATO would probably have disintegrated that day. We prevented that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week Merz had expressed skepticism that U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s ongoing peace push with Russian President Vladimir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[1213,28,2825,473,5293,32,33,2000,299,1945,1824,6084,2597,32949,48,811,657,49,333,771,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-387774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-americas","9":"tag-buildings","10":"tag-debt","11":"tag-defense","12":"tag-diplomacy","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-elections","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-europe","17":"tag-friedrich-merz","18":"tag-germany","19":"tag-infrastructure","20":"tag-military","21":"tag-nato-summit","22":"tag-rights","23":"tag-security","24":"tag-ukraine","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-vladimir-putin","27":"tag-war","28":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115125269669493383","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}