Germany and Russia: It's Complicated

Analysis

BBC

Government, Politics, News

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In late February, three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a landmark speech in the German parliament, the Bundestag. The invasion, he declared, represented a 'Zeitenwende' - a turning point.

The speech has been much discussed since - was Mr Scholz referring simply to the fact of the invasion, or to the way Germany needed to respond to it?

The speech contained a number of policy statements, the boldest of which was the commitment to set up a 100 billion Euro fund to re-equip Germany's outdated armed forces.

The question now is whether Germany will live up to Mr Scholz' promises, or will the cultural, political and economic bonds that have tied Germany and Russia together get in the way?

Presenter: Caroline Bayley Producer: Tim Mansel

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:41.0	Hello and thanks for listening to this edition of Analysis, the podcast. podcasts. I'm reporting from Berlin. The war in Ukraine came as an enormous shock to Europe
0:55.2	and in particular to Germany which has had a historically close relationship with Russia.
1:00.6	Russia's invasion prompted a complete reassessment of Germany's foreign policy, and I'll
1:06.0	be assessing whether Germany's complex relationship with Russia has affected Germany's
1:11.0	response to the war.
1:25.0	Straight ahead of us is a very, very dramatic memorial to the Soviet soldiers who were killed in Berlin at the end of the Second World War. Claudio, can you tell me a little bit about this place?
1:29.0	Yeah, actually this was one of the best known monuments of the Soviet soldiers in Eastern Germany.
1:38.9	It was on almost every textbook.
1:41.8	We all knew it we had school trips to this monument I guess
1:48.0	everybody was here born in eastern Germany at one point. This is Tryptoa Park in the eastern part of Berlin.
1:56.0	The memorial is on a massive scale, dominated by Stark Soviet sculpture.
2:02.0	The centerpiece is a vast statue of a Red Army soldier
2:05.6	carrying a child in one arm and resting his sword on a shattered swastika.
	...

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