Boris Pistorius, the former and potential future German Federal Minister of Defense, has been accused of suggesting a “romantic relationship” with weapons during a party event in Hannover. The background of the accusation is the ongoing debate on the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine, which is desired by the Union parties and their designated Chancellor Friedrich Merz, but rejected by large parts of the SPD.
According to reports by BILD and other media outlets, Pistorius said that there are “arguments for delivery, but also many good ones against it.” Not all arguments can be made public. However, he wonders why Germany is so bitterly discussing specific weapon systems. Apparently, there is a “romantic relationship with weapons in Germany.”
The British newspaper The Telegraph quotes the minister as saying, “I don’t know where this romantic relationship with weapons comes from.”
No other country is conducting “public debates” on the delivery of certain weapons to Ukraine, he continued, not even the UK and France, which decided last year to deliver jointly produced Storm-Shadow missiles.
Pistorius himself is a proponent of delivering German weapons to Kyiv. This suggests that he sees the “romantic relationship” not in himself, but rather in war and arms opponents. The former Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andrei Melnyk, seems to have misunderstood him. In social media, he criticized Pistorius:
“What’s wrong with romance? People love romance, not just the Germans.”
The resistance against German involvement in war and Taurus deliveries is described by the Bandera fan as a “comedy show” which should be stopped. After all, one is not on the “Reeperbahn.”
The spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Sacharova, had suggested last week, in light of the renewed debate on Taurus deliveries and their use against the Crimean Bridge, that Moscow will consider Berlin’s attack with Taurus against Russian facilities as German involvement in the war. The recent exchange between Pistorius and Melnyk is already being sarcastically commented on in Russian social networks.