what a muppet.
Is there any hint of a reason why Putin would ever be scared of Taurus missiles?
from a glance, they look very equivalent to the british storm shadows Ukraine already gets.Not that Germany shouldn’t supply, it just seems that this ultimatum is a purely political idea about the upcoming german elections.
Also, what would even be the end of the war? By Putin logic complete and unconditional surrender by Ukraine would also be the end of the war.
Merz’s threat is not “fuck off behind 1991 borders within 24 hours”. Complete smoke and mirrors shitshow.
Merz ist a Joke and he will most certainly not pull through if the Trump Administration interferes. Just another US Puppet, which in Turn is a Russian puppet… so yeah, just a stunt.
Don’t trust him. Merz is and always has been a bullshitter. He is angling for votes.
Please.
Don’t get your hopes up. Merz would sell his own mother if it raised his chances of getting elected. He’s just listening to what’s unpopular about the current government and claiming to do whatever is the exact opposite. A lot of it is just hot air from yet another populist.
I expect him to continue support for Ukraine though, so that’s good at least.
Hell, I’m in support of Merz selling his own mother if it means more support for Ukraine.
… I may be in a dark place right now.
Plot twist: his mom is the youth sweetheart of Putin from his vacations in East Germany, the break up is what turned him into a violent autocrat, her return could heal his little broken heart and make him the tsar of love and harmony.
Space opera material
without the space
or opera
If that showed up on Netflix I’d watch it
The real scoop!
And then we sneak up and kill him. Right?
Nah, he manages to solve all world conflicts by funneling his stolen billions into massive communication campaigns promoting empathy, which triggers pacific transitions to peacefull democracies in all authoritarian countries.
I want that timeline. Can we please have that timeline?
I’m afraid it’s DLC only content, and requires a lot of macro-transactions
Oh, now voting for Trump (and nothing else would voting for Merz be) is fine?
Hypocrite.Is Merz really Trump-level bad? I know only the basics of German politics (what each party roughly is)
Tue be completely honest that would be more like the AfD. But Merz recently cried about how the “Brandmauer” to them was forced upon them by the media and he or his party never used the term.
Which was a lie of course, his then general secretary used it first in like 2021 and shortly after he used it as well. It’s just that it was more popular at the time to deny any plan with working with them. And those fucks sure didn’t get less shitty over time.He also said the other day he’d do deals with Trump. Whatever those are supposed to be.
Edit: Forgot the conclusion: Not quite literally a facist like the shit smelling convict, but not all that much better either.
Well, certainly not thrilled about the prospect of Merz, then. Hopefully this position ends up shared amongst the other candidates, though.
He also said the other day he’d do deals with Trump. Whatever those are supposed to be.
tbf, everyone is saying that, in part because “One of the biggest nations in the world just elected a moron we can’t work with” is considered undiplomatic, whereas “we’ll do deals” gives the illusion of hope and an out if Trump demands something ridiculous (as he inevitably will).
All this talk about human trafficking, smh. Sad.
What about we sell his mother for a commission?
That’s actually my reasoning voting for him…Kleineres Übel…and let’s be honest, Scholz never was Chancellor material, Habeck still needs more time and I don’t think he’s got enough support from the greens “realoflügel” to have his back and on top of that, the greens do not have enough support to “make” Chancellor. I hate Merz’ s guts, but unless the SPD finds a different candidate (Pistorius, anyone…? I’d vote in a heartbeat for him and I despise the SPD)…Merz is it, even with the risk of an Afd involvement. So if he sells his mother for Taurus in Ukraine and punish Putins utter madness once and for all…so be it.
Your fine with private messages not being private anymore, social securities being cut (including ukrainian refugees) and the police getting closer to US style?
No, I’m not, but the security of Europe is more important than social issues. Apart from that…the Greens have betrayed themselves. https://netzpolitik.org/2024/foto-nachruf-auf-gruene-und-fdp-sie-waren-buergerrechtsparteien/
Habeck is a realo, not fundie. Support for him among green voters (which is what actually counts, not party members, he’ll get his nomination because who else should they run) is overwhelming, very good among SPD voters, AfD voters hate him and that won’t change any time soon, CDU is where he’s going to have to make inroads. Perception-wise the problem is competence, blame that on the Bild campaign and I absolutely expect that to shift very quickly once people actually hear him in a debate.
I listened to Habecks musings quite often and I pray he’s not going to be Chancellor.
That’s OK. If this. Message is popular it pushes his opponent in this direction too.
There is only two opponents to Ukraine aid in the current federal parliament. The neoliberal FDP who just got booted out of the government and wanted to use Ukraine aid to ransom away social security, infrastructure investments and work towards mitigating climate change, and the fascist Putin financed AfD. The FDP is Merz favorite potential next coalition partner, if they should make it to parliament again. The AfD is what Merz is working towards since three years, but cannot make a coalition yet, because he needs to work more on normalizing them first. This currently happens on local and state level.
Merz is only been “pro Ukraine” because Scholz messed up regarding Taurus missiles and because the FDP used it as ransom to ruin other aspects of the state budget. Merz focused on this message as a driving wedge in the dysfunctional, now broken coalition. There is little reason to believe, that he is genuinely caring about Ukraine, or that he would make that a deciding factor in coalition negotiations.
Honestly Merz does a lot of shit, but he is for pro Ukranian action, which is relativly unpopular. The issue is more, that he has never been in government and a lot of his other ideas are horrible.
Also the CDU is in parts very pro Russia. Kretschmer comes to mind.
Honestly Merz does a lot of shit, but he is for pro Ukranian action, which is relativly unpopular.
It’s not unpopular, the Putin bootlickers just shout louder. The majority still approves supporting Ukraine: https://koerber-stiftung.de/presse/mitteilungen/deutsche-wollen-mehr-in-europaeische-sicherheit-investieren/
Merz is for what brings German military industrial complex forward.Turn windmills uhm plowshares into swords.
It shouldn’t be that only one side wins, we need to make agreements that are favourable to both sides.
Yeah I really hope he means like, Russia fuck off to their side of the fence and everyone peel back sanctions, as opposed to give Russia some of the occupied territory
It’ll be interesting to see how much the Allies game kicks up in the next 2 months now that the Orange Potato and Elon Musk were elected President.
I hope it’s effective.
The new fragrance, Orange Potato Musk. Mmmmmm
Now I’m trying to figure the bottle and cologne ad for Orange Potato Musk.
Merz says a lot of things when the day is long, especially when elections are getting closer.
Thank you for the perspective.
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Just for the record, and context: That wasn’t misogyny, it’s not calling any woman anything (though using a word vulgarly referring to female genitalia), it’s the established insult for Merz. Really doesn’t translate well, not so much word-wise but connotation and implication-wise. Cf. the American vs. English vs. Australian usage of the word, doesn’t translate at all and that’s within the same language.
It’s an imputed high-school nickname calling him, in my reading, an immature braggart. You know, 12yold brags about their extensive sexual experience, gets called “pussy hunter” in return to make fun of him. There’s also the additional linguistic quibble that the word, to the amusement of the rest of the republic, simply means “face” in Bavarian and can be used there more or less in the sense of “gob”, as in “shut your gob”. He indeed has a big one.
We are in WW3.
“I am also willing to promise anything to get elected”
- slaacaa (LM-MY)
You have my vote
Halt dein Maul, Merz!
Wow. The same “we’ll easily end this war” bullshit that Trump is spewing. That didn’t take long.
When this moron takes over (and he will), it’s gonna get real bad.
“End the war or I’ll arm the shit out of Ukraine” is different from “end the war please daddy I’ll let you have half of Ukraine.”
Sounds like this guy is a piece of shit though so who knows.
if something like this works (I am guessing only if many EU countries follow suit) then maybe us Americans can suffer 4 years of Trump in exchange for Ukrainian freedom.
As an american, I’ll suffer the bullshit that the right does, if it means Ukraine gets to still exist. Give me some of their pain. I wish I could take that for them.
Noise from a political candidate who will do something if and when he gets elected.
To quote the Spartans, “If”.
Glad to see someone in Europe is growing some balls about standing up to Russia though
sorry to break it to you, but Merz is a populist. He will tell you everything to get voted.
And, frankly, he is a real dickhead. The little Trump of Germany.
The Spartans got annihilated so maybe not a great group to quote.
Finally some leadership. Biden has been slow walking aid this entire war, to Russia’s benefit.
Let’s see how big on words he is once he’s out of opposition. Either way his leadership comes at the cost of him being a 90s style neo libertarian with his own private plane. Other than that he is conservative through and through.
So (I) expect no big investments into health care, education, green technology or public transport but more in tax cuts for the wealthy and investments into “new and revolutionary technologies that will solve all our problems for sure bro” and individual transport infrastructure (which tbh would actually be needed since the German infrastructure is in a pretty bad state with a lot of highway bridges being at the end of their life cycle but on the other hand schools and healthcare are in dire need of investments too). And for all the problems we just blame migrants and strengthen right wing populist positions.
Soo yeah, not really happy with him, not really happy with anyone else atm.
ah, wasnt aware he was a conservative. Thats unfortunate. Lately it seems like all the conservatives are paid off by Putin-- this one seems to have not gotten his check.
Germans actually have a great ideological variety to choose from:
Pro West right wing conservatives
Anti West right wing conservative fascists
Pro West right wing progressives
Pro West left wing progressive social democrats
Pro West left wing progressive greens
Neutral but more anti west leaning left wing progressives (I think they are pro EU but anti NATO and anti war)
Anti West left wing conservative putin dickriders
Too bad they are either unsympathetic or have proven to be incompetent.
Oh I’m sure the thought of two dozen cruise missiles will straighten Putin out ASAP.
For starters, this would not be a new or unprecedented capability for the Ukrainians.
If Germany had several hundred to part with immediately, and the capacity to regularly replenish those stocks, that would make a significant difference on the battlefield, but I doubt it would make Putin sue for peace.
But of course, Germany does not have those kind of stockpiles or manufacturing capacity to maintain that.
Still, it would be nice to see more European politicians picking up the banner of supplying Ukraine in the face of likely diminished, or eliminated, American transfers.
Oh, believe me…we have that manufacturing capabilities. I live near where parts of Taurus are made… It’s just that there’s no “demand” and the bundeswehr doesn’t have enough money to just order them to stockpile.
Capability and capacity are two very different things.
Yes, I understand the manufacturing capability exists, but it’s capacity is limited i.e. existing facilities could not maintain a strategically significant production volume relative to Ukraine’s needs, much less to deter Putin.
Taurus would be used more or less like Storm Shadow against high value strategic targets. The big difference is that Germany would have to default to allow its use on targets inside Russia, since activly being part of the targeting might very well be unconstitutional. So what could be expected are a bunch of Russian jets, ammunition stockpiles and maybe the Kerch Bridge being blown up. Ukrainian drones are not stealthy, so they are much easier to intercept or to warn against. Hence something like Taurus can make a difference.
So it is usefull, but it is not going to change the war fundamentally.
I understand exactly what it is. What I’m saying is that Germany does not have the volume on hand, or the manufacturing capacity to produce such a volume, where it could generate the effect the candidate is implying it can.
The point was more that there are not many strategic targets, which Taurus could hit inside Russia, which can not be hit by a cheaper Ukrainian made drone due to air defence. So if Germany would send thousands of them, it would still not make that much of a difference. The main value is that Russia has to move assets further back.
Operational targets can’t all just simply be moved further and further back from the front lines of a conflict, to say nothing of high value tactical targets.
Supplying several hundred low observable air launched cruise missiles per month would absolutely make a significant difference on the battlefield, that’s not even a question.
But that doesn’t mean I believe that would enough to cause Putin to reverse course, or to deliver a strategic defeat to the Russian army.
Regardless, Germany doesn’t have that manufacturing capacity to begin with, nor do I believe they have the political will to do that, even if it were possible, but again, it is not.
