What is your assessment of who is gaining the upper
hand in Ukraine and when do you think we will
see a material breakthrough?
What what we see in Ukraine is,
is still a war of attrition.
It's still a war. The pure aggression from the Russian
side,
from Putin, who's putting a lot of
personnel into this, into this war,
despite what he gains for.
So what, what, what we see,
what we will see is that on the on the
long run,
it's of course there's an advantage for for Putin
because he has resources and he is of course has
the time.
So it's very urgent for all the Western world to
keep up with the support for Ukraine
to keep up with the support and just to make
sure that we will keep
Freedom and Justice on the rules based international order in
Europe as well.
The change in policy in Germany in terms of allowing
borrowed
arms to strike into in a limited capacity into Russia.
Is that a good move?
Well, this is exactly what we see in the Kharkiv
area.
And there we are in a close battle.
And for this close battle,
I think it's a pure logical decision and it's a
decision which can be made right now.
And it was timely to do so.
I think it's it's absolutely right just to allow Ukraine
to use weapons to defeat them to to defend themselves.
Of course, it's been we were just talking about decades
of underspending post World War Two,
this peace dividend. In retrospect,
was this a really big mistake?
I'm not sure if it was a mistake.
It was a decision taken under different conditions and those
conditions for under spending the money was needed for something
else and of course about our in an,
in an, in a framework of a of a really
clear
not threatening area. So we were surrounded,
like we said, we were surrounded by France in,
in Germany and in, in Europe.
Times have changed. We have seen the aggression of of
Russia
2014 with taking over the Crimea and we have seen
it definitely in
2022 on the 24th of of February,
we'll see unprecedented attack against,
against Russia. So times have changed.
Therefore, the decision in that time,
we're right at the moment we have to
get into different decisions to make ourselves being able to
defend
in terms of, you know,
assistance for Ukraine, You know,
lots of analysts have said that Ukraine doesn't lack courage,
it lacks ammunition. Do you think more can be done
from Germany as obviously a big provider of weapons?
Well, we are, we are the second largest provider on
weapons support in in the world after after the US.
We are in close contact with the US of bringing
in more support.
But I'm I'm also sure that we have to make
sure that we are standing side by side and shoulder
by shoulder with all Western allies
to bring in more. And what meant this was clear
also here during the conference was created from President Zelensky.
What we need, what what Ukraine needs.
It's more ammunition for artillery and it's very clear air
defense,
air defense and air defense.
And just the last question,
China, the second largest economy in the world,
how do you think you know,
what is your assessment of the threat level given its
growing assertiveness on the world stage?
Well, it's, it's clear that we have to see different
CHS.
So it's all interconnected. We can't talk only about Ukraine.
We can't only talk about the Middle East.
I think we have to see the Indo Pacific as
as well.
And we have to see how this interconnection will lead
to the future,
to the multiple futures. And seeing this,
this is also the reason why we are engaging ourselves,
for example, before and into Pacific deployment,
which means exercises here in the region and over the
next couple of years.