German Economics Minister Robert Habeck of the Greens has apologised to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj for the slow pace of German arms deliveries to Ukraine. This emerges from a video recording of a confidential conversation between Habeck, Zelenskyj and several companions.

Konrad Schuller

Political correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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The recording documents how Zelenskyj first thanks Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the German Bundestag for Germany's help in the war against Russia. Habeck then recalls that in 2021 he was one of the first leading German politicians to call for weapons for Ukraine. Germany is now delivering, but "it took too long and it was too late. I know that." Not all German politicians think so, but he himself is "deeply ashamed" about it.

Habeck: My promise still holds true

Habeck adds: "Part of my job in recent years has been to help Ukraine get weapons – as quickly and as many as we could. The promise is still valid."

The video was made on Monday during Habeck's trip to Ukraine in the city of Chernihiv, where he and Zelenskyj visited, among other things, wounded Ukrainian soldiers in a hospital. It was published on Monday evening by the Ukrainian Presidential Chancellery. After the publication, Habeck said his words were "spoken for the president alone." He did not expect them to become public.

Habeck had raised his demand for arms aid for Ukraine in the spring of 2021, just under a year before the Russian major attack on Ukraine the following year. He had reacted to major Russian maneuvers on the Ukrainian border. His statement corresponded to the course of a current in the Greens, for which politicians such as Marieluise Beck, Viola von Cramon, Rebecca Harms, Ralf Fücks, Manuel Sarrazin and partly also the current party chairman Omid Nouripour stood.

When Habeck, then party chairman of the Greens, made his gun demand public in the middle of the 2021 election campaign, he earned open criticism from his then co-chairman, the designated chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock. Baerbock is now foreign minister and herself is calling for military support for Ukraine.