For three days, Ukrainian Kostiantyn Krynytskyi took over the Twitter account of SPD politician Michael Roth. The fact that Roth has left his mouthpiece to Krynytskyi can certainly be understood symbolically: Roth is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the German Bundestag, and together with liberal MP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann and the Green MP Toni Hofreiter, he went to Ukraine to send a signal. All three have been urging the German government for weeks to help Ukraine more.

Kostiantyn Krynytskyi also wants heavy weapons and an energy embargo. And leadership. "Germany is politically the most powerful and economically the strongest country in Europe", he says. From a Ukrainian point of view, Germany needs to lead instead of just following and reacting to what other countries do."

ntv.de: I'm sorry, I completely forgot it's the Orthodox Good Friday today. It's a holiday for you, isn't it?

Kostiantyn Krynytskyi: Yes and no. We do have Easter this weekend, but under martial law we don't have holidays now in Ukraine. And I'm working everyday anyway. For me, it has been one long 24th of February. I don't really distinguish between weekdays, weekends and holidays anymore.

How did it happen that Michael Roth handed over his Twitter account to you?

I work for an environmental NGO in Kyiv*. After the war started, we started having lots of online meetings with representatives of foreign companies, governments and members of parliaments. I was in a Zoom call with Michael, and at the end of it asked me, would I like to do it. I said yes, and that's how it started.

What surprised you the most when you communicated with and for a German audience?

In all those meetings we had with representatives from Germany what everybody kept saying was, that things are impossible to do: "We cannot start an embargo against Russian coal, oil and gas, because this would hurt our economy. Also, it has to be planned in advance." To hear that was very painful. When I left those meetings, the main feeling I usually had was anger.

That's why I was glad to get the chance to talk to a wider audience. Twitter is not big in Ukraine, but I was told it is in Germany, so I thought I could tell people what's going on in Ukraine. People are dying, they are being shelled, shot and raped. I don't know if Twitter is representative of the German population. But still, the main response that I received was like, "we also don't understand what our government is doing, we think we need to do more". So now I understand even less why Germany doesn't support an immediate energy embargo, or why Germany refuses to deliver heavy weapons. It seems that the people are more ready than the government.

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Just this week the German government announced that while Germany itself says it can't deliver heavy arms, it will take part in a circular swap delivering tanks to Slovenia so that Slovenia can deliver tanks to Ukraine. Is that a good development, in your opinion?

Germany is politically the most powerful and economically the strongest country in Europe. From a Ukrainian point of view, Germany needs to lead instead of just following and reacting to what other countries do. A circular swap is certainly better than nothing at all, but it's still not leadership. That is why Germany's public perception is plummeting every single day in Ukraine. It is on a par with Hungary, I would say, and that says a lot.

One of my main topics usually is phasing out of coal and the transition of coal regions. When the latest sanctions package was announced about Russian coal, it said the deadline is in August - that was laughable. An embargo against Russian coal is the easiest thing to do, but still Europe says it will only be done in three months. What will happen in Ukraine in three months? It's the same with oil. The German government says they will phase out Russian oil until the end of the year. We think coal and oil should be in the same package and there should be an immediate ban on both because they can be replaced.

There is a sense in parts of the German government that other European countries aren't necessarily doing more for Ukraine and that Germany is being treated unfair.

That is something that happens a lot when we talk with German representatives, something I think is really strange. We focus on Germany, because first, it is the most important country and second, it also is the main obstacle right now. Smaller countries follow suit in what Germany does. If Germany reverses its course, this will have an impact. But still, German representatives prefer to talk about what other countries are doing or rather not doing. That's whataboutism. They are shifting the focus and the blame. "What about France, what about Italy, what about Britain?" Well, we did not come to talk about France, Italy or Britain, we came to speak about Germany.

Chancellor Scholz argues Germany will not act unilaterally.

Real leadership requires making decisions, brave decisions if necessary. It's easy to wait for others, but as we speak other countries are doing more. America has developed a special drone for Ukraine, just recently. It's not as if Germany would be the first country in Europe to deliver heavy weapons, nor would Germany be the only country in Europa advocating an energy embargo against Russia, on the contrary. Germany has decided not to be an active part in this process. It can and should lead by example, but it chose not to.

What do you think about Germany's policies towards Russia in the last years?

From a Ukrainian point of view, I must say that this situation that Germany finds itself in is completely self-inflicted. It could have been avoided. I'm not a businessman, but it seems to be a strange kind of business logic to make yourself dependent on one supplier. I'm afraid history will not look kindly on Germany's policy in the last twenty years.

Is that a perspective that you tried to spread using Michael Roth's Twitter account?

I generally wanted to bring in a Ukraine perspective. Ukraine still is a blind spot for people in Germany and throughout the world. We are seen through Russian lenses. But we are a separate country, we have hundreds of years of history. A lot of people don't seem to realize that the relationship of Russia and Ukraine is a colonial one: Russia sees us as a colony they need to seize back. That is why it's so painful to hear all this talk about "Russian security interests". That's crazy. We have been fighting for independence for centuries, and now that we are an independent country, people still don't see that. Also, this German feeling of guilt towards Russia about the Second World War, that is disheartening to me, because it completely ignores countries like Ukraine and Belarus. For many Germans, there are no countries between Poland and Russia.

On Twitter, you commented on the debates in German media about the Ukrainian ambassador and the cancelled visit of the German president to Kyiv. Is that something that matters from a Ukrainian perspective?

Debates like that create a swarm of arguments, and nothing is being done. That drives me crazy. Ukraine doesn't need talks about ambassador Melnyk or president Steinmeier. We need embargoes and military assistance. Of course, I completely understand our ambassador. We are at war. He does what it takes to make German media and German politicians pay attention. It's just crazy that so many other things seem to be more important than helping us to survive. All these discussions about heating in the coming winter, about the chemical industry and what an embargo could do to it. Everything is broken down in so many details that people lose sight of the whole picture. There are too many symbolic gestures and not enough support that it makes me angry.

In one tweet, you talked about your grandmother. Where is she, and is she okay?

She's in eastern Ukraine. Her town is not at the frontline, but it is being constantly bombarded with Russian missiles. I didn't yet speak to her today, but yesterday she was alive. She was well. In a couple of days she'll be 93. She remembers when her town was occupied by Germans. German soldiers occupied her house to live in it. Now she's reliving that horror again. She's living with my uncle, they hear explosions constantly, every day. That's what I meant about German's feeling guilt towards Russia but ignoring countries like Belarus and Ukraine. Germany is saying "never again" but is not doing enough to help that this actually does not happen again.

Hubertus Volmer spoke with Kostiantyn Krynytskyi

*) Kostiantyn Krynytskyi makes a point of using Kyiv, as "Kiev" follows the transcription from Russian.

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