How has German policy towards Ukraine evolved? UkraineWorld spoke to Andreas Umland, analyst at Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies. Key points – in our brief, #UkraineWorldAnalysis 1/10 
One approach to understanding the German behavior in the Russia-Ukrainian war is to see it as representative of a more general problem. Participating in this kind of military conflict is a new field of foreign policy for Germany. 2/10
🇩🇪 foreign policy was mainly focused on diplomacy, developmental projects, cultural exchange, and economic investments. The 🇩🇪 government is so slow in dealing with this war in Europe as it has no recent tradition or developed mechanisms for managing this kind of situation. 3/10
A second approach is more specific. The German public is divided on how far support for Ukraine should go. There exists a fear that the Germans could be dragged into the war, and Russia’s rhetoric plays on this fear. 4/10
Another aspect is the nature of 🇩🇪 foreign policy culture, namely that it is prone to appeasement and escapism. 🇩🇪 is located in an exceptionally secure European region. People are not able or willing to analyze the realities of international war and national security. 5/10
One reason why getting off the needle of Russian gas took so long was that Germany’s economic elite (and a good portion of their retired political elites) made money on cheap Russian gas. 6/10
These projects were also driven by the assumption that economic ties with Russia would pacify Putin and promote peace in Europe. There was the erroneous presumption that such business projects were not tied up with political issues. 7/10
There is a need for de-Stalinization and “de-imperialization” of 🇷🇺. In 🇩🇪, such concepts would be easier accepted than rhetoric about denazification of 🇷🇺. The Tsarist, Bolshevik and Stalinist imperial tradition has to be broken via lustration, reparation, and re-education. 8/10
The German expert community today is expressing greater and greater critique of Merkel. Over the 16 years of her reign, she could not make up her mind between two strategies: 9/10
Either modernize Russia with a modernization partnership while at the same time including countries like Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, or exclude Ukraine and Georgia from NATO but then help these and other countries to modernize their countries and especially their armies. 10/10
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