Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused an “epic rift” in Germany’s relations with Moscow, and the war destroyed former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s dream of a “common European home,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Friday, Reuters reported.

Steinmeier, who hails from the wing of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, which has for decades pushed for closer economic ties with Russia to anchor it in the Western global system, stressed that the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24 was an epochal change.

“There is no room for old dreams when we look at Russia today,” he said in an address to the nation, adding that Russian aggression “has thrown Germany into another era, into an insecurity that we thought we had overcome.” : a period marked by war, violence and flight, anxiety that the war was spreading like wildfire across Europe.

Steinmeier made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Tuesday after his office announced last week that the plans had been canceled due to security concerns.

During the visit, he promised Ukraine that Germany would approve the supply of new weapons to Kyiv, stressing that Berlin is already “one of the main suppliers of air defense to Ukraine.”

“Thirty Gepard tanks, three multiple rocket launchers Mars II, several thousand anti-aircraft guns, one of the world’s most modern air defense systems Iris-T. I hope this will help make people safer, protect them from Russia’s brutal aggression,” he said.

The end of the dispute between the President of Germany and Kyiv

Although the German president plays a largely ceremonial role, Steinmeier sparked a diplomatic row between Kyiv and Berlin in April after he said he had told the government in Kyiv he wanted to visit the Ukrainian capital but had been denied.

The Bild daily, which first reported the situation, quoted a Ukrainian diplomat as saying that “we all know about Steinmeier’s close relationship with Russia here… He is not welcome in Kyiv at the moment. Let’s see if it will change.”

Before the information appeared in the press, the German president said that he was wrong about Vladimir Putin’s “imperial madness” and called his support for the Nord Stream project a mistake.

Later, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he would not visit Kyiv either until the Ukrainian authorities also received the German president.

However, at the beginning of May, Steinmeier’s office reported that he had been on the phone with Volodymyr Zelenskyi, and the two heads of state resolved the dispute caused by Kyiv’s refusal to receive him for a visit.

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