German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has pledged assistance to Poland and all of Central and Eastern Europe in the face of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. “We will be there for you, just as you were there for us when we needed you most,” said the Greens politician on Monday at a celebration of the German embassy in the Polish capital of Warsaw on German Unity Day. The security of Eastern Europe is Germany’s security. “You can rely on that,” she called out to the guests from Poland.
October 3rd commemorates German reunification in 1990, just under a year after the peaceful revolution in the GDR in autumn 1989. In the 1980s, the Poles overcame the communist regime with protests and thus initiated the turning point in Eastern Europe.
“We will not let up in our support for Ukraine” – together with our partners in the EU and NATO, stressed Baerbock. “Because we Germans will never forget that we have our allies and neighbors to thank for our life in freedom, in a reunified country in the heart of Europe.”
Germany and Poland are forever connected, said Baerbock. “What we have is a friendship of the heart between millions of people, a friendship and partnership that is stronger than political differences.” This friendship has to be worked on again and again, “no matter how challenging it may be sometimes,” she said against the background of Polish reparations claims in the trillions.
For seven months, Europe has been experiencing “a war that is writing a new chapter in our history with a brutal pen,” said Baerbock. The Ukrainians fought not only for the survival of their country, but for a free Europe. “Right now we are experiencing how an effective European Union is not an end in itself, but our common life insurance.”