MUNICH (Reuters) – German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Friday defended her country’s decision not to send weapons to Ukraine to fend off a possible Russian invasion, saying its World War Two past meant it had a duty to seek other ways to secure peace.
Germany was Ukraine’s biggest donor, for example, Baerbock said in a pannel at the Munich Security Conference with her U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken, who agreed that Western powers were working in a complementary, coordinated way.
“This is our strength – we are standing all together but using our different roles of support, with our different histories,” Baerbock said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko, who was sitting in the audience at the event, countered the minister, saying that at the current moment, Ukraine needed Germany to deliver it “defensive weapons”.
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold in Munich and Sarah Marsh in Berlin, Editing by Kirsti Knolle)
