"First check sources before discussing": reprimand for Markus Lanz in the Ukraine war

Markus Lanz (ZDF) is about the attitude of Germany and NATO in the Russia-Ukraine war about Germany’s security of supply.

Sometimes sanctions also go too far: In response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Madrid opera house Teatro Real has canceled the performances of the world-famous Moscow Bolshoi Ballet scheduled for May. These measures were decided because the military operations of the Russian troops are causing “a serious crisis in the world and a painful emergency”, said the opera in the Spanish capital. One regrets this step, especially since the director general of the Bolshoi Theater, Vladimir Urin, spoke out against the war. What kind of world do we actually live in? Only in a black and white according to the motto “Ukraine good, Russia bad”? Because of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s despicable campaign in Ukraine, which has long been extremely corrupt, where, for example, the regime that was fortunately replaced in 2012, in the run-up to the European Football Championship, all the street dogs in Kyiv as “polluters” were captured and killed, now all Russians put in collective custody? Is this a new form of Cold War?

Markus Lanz on ZDF does not talk about this. And this despite the fact that regular guest Robin Alexander was announced in advance by the Mainz broadcaster: “The deputy editor-in-chief of ‘Welt’ will assess the government’s historic change of course on armaments issues and comment on the current sanctions against Russia.” But it wasn’t his failure, it was rather that of the presenter, who was visibly overwhelmed that evening, who asked critical questions about the sense and nonsense of the measures against the military aggressor in the heart of Europe that hardly went beyond the socio-political canon of the last few days.

At least the journalist born in Essen in 1975, who has been reporting on the Chancellery since 2010, accompanied ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel as a reporter to international summits and in 2017 took first place in the ‘Spiegel’ with his book “The Driven: Merkel and Refugee Policy”. bestseller list in the “hardcover non-fiction” category, questioned the Western course against the Russian economy, which sometimes hits the wrong people: “There are now sanctions for wood and fish, you can probably no longer buy Matryoshka dolls on the Internet, but this Gas keeps running. (…) They send gas, we send money, they buy weapons!”

Recorded “Markus Lanz” episode (ZDF) on the Ukraine war shows how quickly the situation is changing

It was a ragged Tuesday night talk show anyway, proving once again that reality can quickly overtake pre-recorded shows in terms of timeliness. Would you like an example? The actually smart South Tyrolean started his round of talks with the report that Poland wants to give old Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 fighter jets to the USA so that they can be delivered to the Ukraine via the German (!) Ramstein base. More than half of the broadcast time, including the discussion of whether the US Air Force base in Rhineland-Palatinate, was extraterritorial US territory, was devoted to this topic and whether Russia could see this as NATO entering the war.

While Robin Alexander feared a “crass dynamic” in this development, political scientist Claudia Major said everything and at the same time nothing about the alleged fighter jet delivery: “If Russia wants to feel provoked, it will feel provoked”. While the canned version was broadcast on ZDF from 11:20 p.m., Brussels correspondent Markus Preiß had already said in the “Tagesthemen” that Poland would only take this step if there was a unanimous decision by all of NATO. Neither the moderator nor his guests could know that during Lanz’s discussion in a studio in Hamburg-Altona. A little later, the US Department of Defense rejected the plan as “unsustainable”. It poses “difficult logistical challenges” and there are “serious concerns” about the geopolitical dimension, said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.

To save Markus Lanz’s honour, it must be said that at the end of his talk – probably thanks to a mini-headphone in his ear – he visibly irritated and uncomfortably touched that a state secretary in the Foreign Ministry had meanwhile said that even the Americans hadn’t heard anything about it known about the Polish plan. That visibly pissed off FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who has been chairwoman of the Defense Committee of the German Bundestag since 2021. Rightly so, she snapped at Lanz, “that you first have to check the sources before you discuss it!” Even at the beginning of the extremely unfortunate program, she admitted: “I just found out about this report.” Not the newspaper from today is tomorrow already yesterday’s snow…

Markus Lanz (ZDF) invites an economist to talk about independence from Russia, but she hardly gets a chance to speak

Armin Laschet, the failed chancellor candidate of the CDU, also spoke up: “Polish MiG fighter planes via Ramstein to the Ukraine. Pentagon spokesman says: “It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it.” #Lanz discusses as if it were a fact. Prudence is a great asset these days. #respicefinem”

The last third of the program also disintegrated: Why economist Karen Pittel from Munich’s “ifo Center for Energy, Climate and Resources” was invited by the host and his editors when she was hardly allowed to speak remains an unsolved mystery. When Markus Lanz then asked her whether Germany should and could do without Russian natural gas and petrol out of solidarity with Ukraine because of the war, she was “extremely skeptical” whether this would end the fight. She too seemed affected by the horror reports of the last two weeks: “I’m an economist: I should be rational…” From a purely economic point of view, however, one could afford it in this country. According to their forecast, this should cost us between 0.3 percent and three percent of the gross domestic product, which would amount to between 800 and 1000 euros per person. Nobody in the studio would have any problems with that, but it could be a serious financial burden for fellow citizens who don’t earn that well.

Nonetheless, Robin Alexander advocated a complete abandonment of Russian gas. He attacked posthumously, so to speak, the pro-Russian policy of Putin buddy Gerhard Schröder, but also of the following Merkel governments: “Everything that Germany did there failed.” The talk show on that Tuesday evening can also be regarded as a failure, which hardly brought new insights to light. Unfortunately, we have all known for a few days that the Russian invasion, as Claudia Major remarked, has become “much more ruthless and brutal”. Also “of purges and the disappearance of critical people” and the abuse of humanitarian corridors by Russia in several wars such as in Syria or on the Crimean Peninsula. Added to this is the blocking of social networks that has not been taken up. For days, the author of these lines has had no contact with his Russian Facebook friend Sofia Karasowa, an ardent admirer of the deceased actor greats Oskar Werner and Alan Rickman, who wrote in a public post for the system critic Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny, who is still in prison in Russia and spoke out against Valdimir Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

Markus Lanz (ZDF) on the subject of Ukraine: Video by the Prime Minister of Saarland amuses the group

With so much real horror, there was an involuntarily funny moment at the end. A smart phone video of Tobias Hans (CDU), Prime Minister of Saarland, calling for a fuel price brake, was recorded. This caused amusement for almost everyone in the round of talks, because the extremely committed campaigner happily used the first name in his speech in front of the gas station and fell into his dialect.

Only Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann stopped laughing: The way Tobias Hans tried to copy the style of the desperate mobile phone messages from Volodymyr Zelenskyj, the President of Ukraine, would be downright “embarrassing”: “People, people, this is a quality that is hard to ignore! I’m shaking!” This comparison was – like many things that evening – a bit too far-fetched and that of a lady who, according to her own statements, “is the last one who doesn’t do a crisp election campaign herself”. (Marc Hairapetian)