“Ukraine – the situation”: Mölling sees “new reality” in the Ukraine war

According to security expert Christian Mölling, the massive defensive positions of the Russian armed forces have forced the Ukrainians to change their strategy. Mölling referred on Tuesday in the starpodcast “Ukraine – the situation” pointed out that significant obstacles would have to be overcome in order to liberate the occupied territories.

“The Ukrainians obviously had to adapt,” said the research director of the German Society for Foreign Relations. He showed understanding for now primarily fighting supply routes, logistics and enemy troops far away from the front. Mölling defended the Ukrainians against criticism that their counter-offensive was not progressing fast enough. In the West there has been an outright competition to meet expectations. He complained: “In the West they wanted to have a kind of promise: I’ll only give you a third of what you need. But you can do it three times as fast.”

Security expert Mölling criticizes the federal government

He accused the federal government of not having recognized early enough that there would be a debate about the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles. She should have recognized this and prepared the delivery communicatively. Instead, hesitation again. “In political communication, you should prepare things instead of just running after them,” he complained. “It’s almost unrealistic.”

Even if a decision is made in the interests of Ukraine, it will definitely come too late. “How are we doing in the end? As the pettiest shopkeepers,” he said. From Mölling’s point of view, France, for example, acts much more skilfully by providing weapons at an early stage, which also has a public effect. This could even mean that in the end you have to deliver less than if you were the last to be willing to do so. According to Mölling, Germany could have offered the Taurus at the beginning of the Ukrainian offensive. “That wouldn’t have been wrong,” he emphasized.

The German attitude shows that insufficient consideration was given to the conditions under which the Ukrainians’ efforts could be successful. This urgently needs to be changed. Because: “If you think this through, it really is a dead end.” He called for politicians not to decide on the necessity and suitability of each individual weapon system, but instead to rely more on the military. “We have had a really bad experience when politicians try to evaluate military decisions,” he said, referring to Afghanistan, where the necessary systems had been held back so that the impression was not created that war was raging there.