German political leaders have reacted with alarm to U.S. President Donald Trump’s bombshell announcement that his administration will conduct peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the head of European leaders.

“To be clear, peace must last over the long term. It must secure Ukraine’s sovereignty,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday. “That is why we will never support a dictated peace. Nor will we accept any solution that leads to a decoupling of European and American security. Only one person would benefit from that. President Putin.”

Scholz, whose Social Democratic Party (SPD) is in third place according to polls ahead of a Feb. 23 national election, called for more spending on Germany’s defense and military aid for Ukraine, and urged conservatives to relax the country’s strict spending rules — a theme he has touched on repeatedly during the election campaign — in order to do so.

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  • @froh42
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    5 days ago

    We’ll have an election in a few days here in Germany. And we’re already stumbling. The polls don’t look wo good.

    • @Bonskreeskreeskree
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      14 days ago

      Hopefully you have much more robust fraud and manipulation systems of review than the us. Musk very likely compromised the systems and all investigations are stopped in their tracks

      • @[email protected]
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        14 days ago

        Don’t worry on that angle we’re using paper ballots, always have, always will, as the constitutional court decided that it must be possible for a voter with basic education and no specialised knowledge to ascertain for themselves that the vote is kosher. The constitutional court recently got reinforced, too. Not to mention that the federal level has preciously little power if the states really decided to tell it to fuck off. Also, as a Nazi you shouldn’t trust a military that names bases after Stauffenberg.

        • @Bonskreeskreeskree
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          13 days ago

          Can a voter verify their ballot was counted and for who the votes were cast?

          • @[email protected]
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            3 days ago

            Yes. You can observe the whole vote, keeping an eye on the ballot box all the time until it is emptied on a big table, where it is sorted, and once sorted things get counted, there’s a whole procedure to minimise confusion and with that errors, double counts etc. Unless a magician comes along and teleports your ballot out of the box you can then be sure that it has been counted.

            What you can’t do is prove to anyone that you voted a certain way and that’s a good thing.

            • @Bonskreeskreeskree
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              13 days ago

              But can you prove to yourself that your vote for candidate a was cast for your name and no nefarious acts led it to go to candidate b instead?