Germany says never wished Ukraine would crumble quickly

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Berlin denied that its government ever wished for Ukraine to be swiftly defeated in the midst of the ongoing war after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that Germany wanted "the whole thing to be over quickly."

Johnson told CNN in an interview on Wednesday that at a certain point, Germany saw that Ukraine would be better off folding if Russia launched an offensive.

"I couldn’t support that, I thought that was a disastrous way of looking at it. But I can understand why they thought and felt as they did," Johnson told CNN. Germany has rapidly sought to reduce its reliance on Russian energy since Moscow’s invasion.

The former premier also said France was "in denial" about the prospect of war in Ukraine.

"What happened was everybody – Germans, French, Italians, everybody, (US President) Joe Biden – saw that there was simply no option. Because you couldn’t negotiate with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," he added.

German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit denied Johnson's allegations during a daily press briefing, stressing that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced military aid for Ukraine four days after the war broke out.

"I think that the facts speak against what [Johnson] claimed in the interview," the spokesman said.

Germany has been a major supporter of Kiev's since the start of the war, with Ukraine becoming the second-largest importer of German weapons after Berlin approved the exportation of $584 million worth of weaponry to Ukraine within the first 6 months of 2022. 

Meanwhile, in the first half of the year, the EU supported Ukraine with €1.2 billion in loans and billions in arms and weapons deliveries, and in July it agreed to provide an assistance package worth €9 billion of which €1 billion were dispatched last summer and another €5 billion are already approved but not yet delivered.

By supplying weapons to Ukraine, Hebestreit argued, Germany went against its longtime principle of not sending arms to a conflict zone. He further underlined that the German government always believed that Russia should not be allowed to win.

A German government official said earlier that the European Union sought to finance an aid package worth some 8 billion euros by September for Ukraine, which goes to show that the EU found it easier to finance arms than aid for refugees.

Despite pledging more assistance, senior EU officials admit that there will most likely be a "crunch point" in the fall or early winter when EU countries begin to feel acute domestic economic pain as a result of the crisis.

Germany has also been bearing the brunt of the Ukraine crisis more than anyone else, with the head Klaus Müller saying earlier in the month that though Germany has decent stockpiles of gas, the winter can be quite the long one for the country.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said a week earlier that German citizens would need to learn to be modest and accept the sacrifices and losses they are going through during the current crisis.

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Meanwhile, Alternative for Germany party (AfD) co-chair Tino Chrupalla underlined that Germany won't be Europe's gas hub for the sale of hydrocarbons - instead, it will have to purchase Russian fossil fuels from other countries, including Turkey.

This comes despite Germany announcing in mid-October that its gas reserves have been filled up to 95% faster than anticipated.

Berlin has also implemented policies that permit the use of more coal-based energy and lower energy consumption in public structures.

Additionally, it has invested 1.50 billion euros ($1.46 billion) in the purchase of liquefied natural gas from Qatar and the United States, two of its key suppliers. Five new LNG terminals are also being developed for the purpose of importing LNG by sea.