OPEN LETTER: The Ukraine-Germany Strategic Declaration must be honored

June 17, 2026 — more than a defense pact

On June 17, 2026, alongside the bilateral defense pact that made headlines across European media, Germany and Ukraine signed a Strategic Partnership Declaration whose scope extends far beyond military cooperation. This document commits both countries to a comprehensive relationship spanning security cooperation, reconstruction financing, EU and NATO accession support, and cultural cooperation — a statement of intent that the two countries intend to build a partnership of depth and permanence, not merely a wartime transactional relationship.

This open letter is addressed to those responsible for honoring this declaration — in Berlin's chancellery, in the German Bundestag, in the German civil service, and in the German public, whose support ultimately gives political commitments their durability. The Strategic Partnership Declaration is a remarkable document. The question is whether it will be honored with the seriousness that its historical weight demands — or whether it will join the long list of European political declarations whose fine language was never fully backed by the institutional follow-through it required.

Why Germany's commitment carries particular weight

Germany's partnership declaration with Ukraine carries a historical weight that no other European country's equivalent commitment could carry. Germany launched the Second World War with the invasion of Poland in September 1939. German forces occupied Ukraine from 1941 to 1944, during which period they participated in, enabled, or directly executed some of the most catastrophic violence in the history of a country that has known more than its share of catastrophe. Some of the gravest crimes of the twentieth century were committed on Ukrainian soil, within living memory of some of those still alive today.

This historical dimension is not invoked to paralyze Germany with guilt or to suggest that 2026 Germany bears personal responsibility for 1941 Germany's crimes. It is invoked to explain why Germany's commitment to Ukraine's security and reconstruction carries a moral obligation that transcends normal foreign policy considerations. Germany owes Ukraine — not in a simplistic way, but in the way that serious historical actors acknowledge the debts that history creates.

I write this as someone who believes in Germany — in the Germany that processed the Nazi era more rigorously than almost any nation has ever processed its worst history, in the Germany of the Erinnerungskultur, in the Germany that built European institutions precisely to make the repetition of its crimes impossible. That Germany has a specific obligation to Ukraine. Not because the current generation committed the crimes of the earlier one. Because it has chosen, deliberately and admirably, to inherit the responsibility for reckoning with those crimes. That choice has consequences, including toward Ukraine.

A reversal of policy, not just of spending

The Zeitenwende — the "turning point" announced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on February 27, 2022, three days after Russia's full-scale invasion — was the most dramatic reversal of German foreign and security policy since reunification. It acknowledged, belatedly and unavoidably, that Germany's post-Cold War approach to Russia — built on economic engagement, energy dependence, and the belief that trade would gradually liberalize Russian society and behavior — had been a catastrophic miscalculation.

The Zeitenwende had a Ukrainian dimension from its first day: Germany's historic underinvestment in its own defense had made it less capable of supporting Ukraine than its economy and political weight should have allowed. Its energy dependence on Russia had constrained its political freedom to act against Moscow with the force that the moral situation demanded. The Zeitenwende was, in part, a reckoning with how Germany's choices had limited Europe's ability to deter the aggression that is now killing Ukrainians daily. That reckoning is not complete. The Strategic Partnership Declaration is one of its expressions.

The gas dependence that must never be repeated

Germany's Nord Stream dependence on Russian gas was not merely an energy policy error. It was a strategic dependency that Moscow weaponized — that constrained German foreign policy, that funded the Russian military machine, and that made Berlin's pre-2022 reluctance to arm Ukraine or impose serious sanctions on Russia a product, in part, of energy calculation rather than pure political choice. The billions of euros that flowed from Germany to Russia through gas purchases in the years preceding the invasion helped finance the military buildup that Ukraine is now fighting.

The Strategic Partnership Declaration must be read against this background. Germany is not simply offering Ukraine a partnership. It is, implicitly and explicitly, acknowledging that its previous choices contributed to Ukraine's current situation. The declaration is not charity — it is restitution, in part. And restitution carries obligations that are more demanding than those attached to ordinary generosity.

I choose my words carefully here. I am not suggesting that Germany caused Russia's invasion or bears responsibility for Putin's decisions. I am suggesting that Germany's choices — on energy dependence, on arms exports, on the pace of its own rearmament — shaped the strategic environment in which Russia made those decisions. Acknowledging that shaping is not the same as accepting culpability. But it does change the moral weight of the obligation going forward. Germany knows this. The question is whether it acts accordingly.

Security cooperation: the foundation

The first pillar of the Strategic Partnership Declaration is security cooperation — the continuation and deepening of military support, intelligence sharing, training cooperation, and defense industrial partnership that has been the most visible dimension of German-Ukrainian relations since 2022. Germany has provided Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks, Patriot air defense systems, IRIS-T air defense, Gepard anti-aircraft systems, and substantial quantities of artillery, ammunition, and armored vehicles. Each of these deliveries was preceded by painful political debate in Germany and came later than Ukraine's urgent needs required.

The declaration's security pillar commits Germany to a more systematic and less reactive approach — to treating Ukrainian security assistance as a long-term strategic commitment rather than a series of individually debated decisions requiring fresh political will each time. This matters operationally: Ukraine's military planning is better served by predictable, sustained support than by episodic deliveries negotiated through domestic German political crises. The declaration promises a structural upgrade in how Germany manages its security relationship with Ukraine.

Reconstruction financing: the long-term investment

The second pillar addresses reconstruction financing — Germany's contribution to rebuilding the Ukraine that Russia has systematically destroyed. Germany has committed to being a lead partner in the reconstruction of specific Ukrainian regions and sectors: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and other German states have adopted Ukrainian regions as long-term reconstruction partners, creating institutional relationships that connect German public administration capacity with Ukrainian reconstruction needs at a level of operational specificity that international conferences cannot replicate.

The reconstruction dimension of the declaration extends beyond financial contributions to technical assistance, capacity transfer, and institutional partnership — the harder, slower work of helping Ukrainian institutions develop the management capacity to absorb and deploy reconstruction resources effectively. Germany has specific expertise in post-war reconstruction, drawn from its own post-1945 experience and from decades of development cooperation. Making that expertise available to Ukraine in a sustained way is one of the most valuable contributions the partnership can make.

Germany's post-war reconstruction — the Wirtschaftswunder, the Marshall Plan, the sustained investment in institutions and infrastructure that turned a destroyed country into the continent's largest economy — is one of the most studied policy successes in modern history. Ukraine needs access to the accumulated knowledge of that experience, not just to German money. The Strategic Partnership Declaration can be the vehicle for transferring that knowledge systematically rather than ad hoc.

Germany's role in Ukraine's EU accession

The third pillar of the declaration — EU and NATO accession support — is where Germany's weight within European institutions becomes most strategically relevant. Germany is the EU's largest economy and most influential member state. When Berlin advocates clearly and consistently for accelerated Ukrainian accession, it changes the political geometry of the accession debate in Brussels in ways that no smaller member state's advocacy can replicate. The declaration commits Germany to being an active, persistent champion for Ukrainian accession within EU institutions — not merely a passive supporter that votes correctly when forced to choose.

The accession negotiations formally opened in June 2026 — a milestone that Germany co-authored through its advocacy. The negotiations are the beginning of a process that will span years of institutional review, reform conditionality, and bilateral negotiation on specific chapters of the accession acquis. Germany's commitment to accompanying Ukraine through this entire process — not just the opening ceremony — is what the declaration's accession pillar requires. Accession support is a multi-year operational commitment, not a one-time political declaration.

NATO accession advocacy: Berlin must lead

Ukraine's NATO membership represents the most durable long-term security guarantee available — the only commitment with Article 5's automaticity, the only institutional framework with the credibility to deter Russian military aggression on a sustained basis. Germany's position on Ukrainian NATO membership has evolved significantly since 2022, moving from the hedged ambiguity that characterized German foreign policy toward Russia for decades to a clearer advocacy for membership once the conditions for admission are met.

The declaration commits Germany to active advocacy for Ukrainian NATO membership within the Alliance's governance structures — to use Germany's voting weight, diplomatic relationships, and political influence to build the consensus that currently does not exist toward a consensus that does. This is not passive support. It requires sustained bilateral diplomacy with hesitant member states, sustained advocacy in North Atlantic Council meetings, and the willingness to bear the political cost of pushing for a position that some Alliance members resist. The declaration commits Germany to doing this work. The work has not yet fully begun.

Germany opposed Ukraine's NATO membership at the Bucharest Summit in 2008. It is one of the unspoken historical facts of this crisis — that Germany's role in blocking Ukrainian accession sixteen years ago contributed to the security vacuum that Russia exploited. The declaration is an opportunity to make a different choice this time. Berlin must make it loudly, persistently, and in the rooms where Alliance decisions are actually made, not only in press releases.

More than military and financial ties

The fourth pillar of the Strategic Partnership Declaration — cultural cooperation — is the one most likely to be overlooked in analyses focused on security and economics. It should not be. The relationship between Germany and Ukraine is not only a governmental relationship; it is a relationship between peoples, between cultures, between historical communities that have complex and painful shared memories. The cultural cooperation pillar acknowledges that a durable partnership cannot rest only on military agreements and financial flows — it requires the building of mutual knowledge, mutual respect, and mutual investment in understanding each other's experience.

Germany has a significant Ukrainian diaspora — hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who fled the war and are living in German cities, learning German, sending their children to German schools, and navigating the complex experience of displacement while maintaining their connection to a country under fire. The cultural cooperation pillar addresses this diaspora dimension: ensuring that Ukrainian cultural identity is supported in Germany, that Ukrainian children have access to education in their own language, and that the Ukrainian cultural presence in Germany is treated as an enrichment rather than a temporary inconvenience.

The memory dimension: confronting what Germany did in Ukraine

Cultural cooperation between Germany and Ukraine requires, eventually and unavoidably, confronting the memory of German crimes on Ukrainian soil. The Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial in Kyiv, to which Germany has contributed funding and political support, is one expression of this confrontation. But the full reckoning with German violence in Ukraine — the Hunger Plan, the occupation regime's deliberate brutality, the specific Ukrainian dimensions of the Holocaust — has not yet been integrated into German public memory with the depth and specificity that it deserves.

The cultural cooperation pillar of the declaration creates an institutional framework for deepening this memory work — through educational exchanges, joint historical research programs, museum cooperation, and the translation and dissemination of Ukrainian historical scholarship on the occupation period. This is not comfortable work. It is necessary work — and Germany's demonstrated capacity for historical reckoning makes it uniquely capable of doing it with the integrity it requires.

I have read accounts of German soldiers in Ukraine in 1941 — the methodical documentation of atrocities that the German administrative mentality produced even at its most criminal. That documentation exists. It is in German archives. Making it fully accessible to Ukrainian historians, teaching it in German schools alongside the Soviet and Holocaust dimensions it intersects, is part of what cultural cooperation between these two countries must mean. The Strategic Partnership Declaration can be the framework. The will must be German.

Where political commitments find or lose their durability

Declarations signed by chancellors can be reversed by future chancellors. Treaties ratified by parliaments can be renegotiated. Institutional commitments embedded in EU frameworks are harder to reverse — but no commitment is more durable than the political support of a democratic public that has genuinely internalized the reasons for it. The Strategic Partnership Declaration will be honored only if the German public — or a large and politically decisive portion of it — comes to believe that the partnership with Ukraine is in Germany's interest and consistent with Germany's values.

This belief is not automatic. German public opinion on Ukraine support has been contested throughout the war — with significant minorities expressing fatigue, questioning costs, or harboring residual sympathies for a Russia-accommodating foreign policy that the pre-2022 German mainstream had normalized. The political task of sustaining the partnership is also a cultural and educational task — building the public understanding of what is at stake that makes political support for costly commitments democratically viable over time.

The AfD challenge: domestic politics and the partnership's future

The most significant domestic political threat to the Strategic Partnership Declaration is the rise of the AfD — the Alternative für Deutschland — whose positions on Ukraine have ranged from skeptical to openly pro-Russian, and whose electoral growth represents a potential future veto on German Ukraine policy if it reaches government. The AfD's opposition to arms deliveries, sanctions, and financial support for Ukraine reflects a strand of German opinion that the declaration's authors must acknowledge rather than ignore.

The response to this challenge is not to accommodate the AfD's positions but to make the case for the partnership forcefully and publicly — to explain to German citizens why Ukraine's security is Germany's security, why the historical obligations create moral imperatives that cannot be satisfied with rhetoric alone, and why the cost of sustaining the partnership is far lower than the cost of abandoning it. This case must be made by German politicians with the courage to make it, in the face of electoral pressure that rewards silence on the matter.

Germany has the institutional and cultural resources to sustain a long-term commitment to Ukraine. What it lacks is the political leadership willing to explain that commitment to the German public in terms that make its necessity viscerally clear rather than abstractly defensible. The Zeitenwende happened because Putin's invasion was undeniable. The Strategic Partnership Declaration needs a political champion willing to make the same case at a level below the headlines, in the daily work of democratic persuasion. I am watching for who that champion will be.

The regional partnership model

Germany's most innovative contribution to Ukrainian reconstruction may be the regional partnership model — the matching of specific German states with specific Ukrainian regions for sustained, long-term reconstruction partnership. Baden-Württemberg with Odessa, Bavaria with Kyiv, North Rhine-Westphalia with Dnipropetrovsk — these bilateral regional relationships create accountability structures and operational specificity that bilateral government-to-government relationships often lack. A German state government has a direct political interest in demonstrating results in its partner Ukrainian region; a Ukrainian regional government has a direct counterpart to call when problems arise.

This model does not replace central government-to-government financing. It supplements it with a layer of institutional relationships that can survive changes in national government on either side, that can mobilize local expertise and local political will, and that create the civil society connections — between German and Ukrainian municipalities, universities, hospitals, and cultural institutions — that give the partnership its social depth. The Strategic Partnership Declaration should explicitly institutionalize and resource this regional partnership model as one of its most operationally valuable components.

Infrastructure reconstruction: the German expertise

Ukraine's reconstruction needs are dominated by infrastructure — energy grids, water systems, transportation networks, housing, hospitals, schools. Germany has specific expertise in infrastructure reconstruction drawn from decades of post-unification investment in East Germany, from its development cooperation programs across the Global South, and from its position as home to some of the world's most capable engineering and construction firms. Deutsche Bahn, Siemens, RWE, and German engineering SMEs have capabilities directly relevant to Ukraine's reconstruction priorities.

The declaration must create the incentive structures that mobilize this private sector expertise rather than relying exclusively on government-to-government transfers. De-risking mechanisms, political risk insurance, first-loss guarantees, and EU co-financing frameworks that make Ukrainian reconstruction commercially viable for German private investment are the tools that translate the declaration's ambition into operational reality. Without these tools, the reconstruction pillar risks remaining declarative rather than transformative.

Germany rebuilt its eastern states after unification at a cost of approximately €2 trillion over three decades. That experience — of what sustained infrastructure investment can do to a region devastated by decades of mismanagement and underinvestment — is directly relevant to Ukraine's reconstruction. The question is whether the German state and German private sector will bring that reconstruction knowledge to Ukraine with the same sustained commitment they brought to Dresden, Leipzig, and Rostock. The declaration says yes. The follow-through will be the answer.

Germany's energy debt to Ukraine

Germany's energy cooperation with Russia — the Nord Stream pipelines, the gas dependence that fueled Russian military budgets — created a specific obligation toward Ukraine that the Strategic Partnership Declaration must address explicitly. German energy companies profited from a relationship with Russia that simultaneously financed the military machine now targeting Ukrainian power plants. The Zeitenwende acknowledged this indirectly. The Strategic Partnership Declaration must acknowledge it directly, in the form of concrete commitments to Ukrainian energy reconstruction that go beyond what general reconstruction financing would require.

Germany has world-class expertise in energy transition — in solar installation, wind power, grid management, energy storage, and the regulatory frameworks that enable distributed energy generation. Ukraine will need all of these capabilities in its post-war reconstruction. German energy companies — including those that built their revenues on Russian gas — have a specific moral interest in ensuring that Ukraine's rebuilt energy system is resilient, renewable, and independent of the fossil fuel dependencies that created the strategic vulnerabilities Russia exploited.

The Siemens Energy connection

Siemens Energy has existing relationships with Ukrainian utilities dating to before the war. Its transformer and substation equipment is installed across Ukraine's power grid — which means Siemens is one of the few companies with the institutional knowledge needed to repair and rebuild specific components of the grid that Russia has targeted. The Strategic Partnership Declaration should create the framework for Siemens Energy and comparable German companies to engage in Ukrainian energy reconstruction with the institutional and financial backing that makes sustained engagement viable rather than episodic.

The energy reconstruction dimension of the partnership is where Germany's private sector expertise is most directly deployable and where German companies can make contributions that pure government-to-government financial transfers cannot replicate. Mobilizing this expertise is the declaration's most urgent operational challenge.

There is something almost poetic about German companies — some of which profited from the Nord Stream era — being asked to rebuild the Ukrainian power grid that Russian missiles targeted with weapons financed by the gas that flowed through those pipelines. I do not say this to shame anyone. I say it to name the moral logic that gives German corporate engagement in Ukrainian energy reconstruction a dimension beyond normal commercial activity. That moral logic should be part of how German companies explain their engagement to their own stakeholders.

Parliamentary accountability for executive declarations

The Strategic Partnership Declaration was signed by Chancellor Merz — an executive act that, in Germany's constitutional system, requires parliamentary support for its financial and legislative implications. The Bundestag bears a specific responsibility for ensuring that the declaration's commitments are translated into budgetary allocations, legislative authorizations, and institutional frameworks that give the partnership operational substance rather than leaving it as a political statement without institutional backing.

German parliamentary history includes examples of executive commitments that were not fully followed through at the legislative level — where the political will to sign was not matched by the political will to appropriate, to authorize, to create the bureaucratic infrastructure needed to implement what was promised. The Strategic Partnership Declaration must not become one of these examples. The Bundestag's responsibility is to ensure that it does not.

Bipartisan commitment: beyond the current coalition

The durability of Germany's commitment to Ukraine depends on whether that commitment transcends the current governing coalition. A commitment that belongs only to Merz's CDU/CSU coalition is a commitment that evaporates if the coalition changes. The Strategic Partnership Declaration needs to be anchored in a broader German political consensus — one that includes the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP alongside the governing parties — that treats the Ukraine partnership as a German national commitment rather than a ruling coalition preference.

Building that bipartisan consensus is partly the work of the current government — of making the case for the partnership across party lines — and partly the work of opposition parties, which must choose to support a commitment whose strategic logic is clear even if their political calculus might suggest otherwise. Ukrainian security cannot be a coalition issue in German politics. It must be a national one.

I address this letter not just to Merz and his coalition, but to Olaf Scholz, to Robert Habeck, to Annalena Baerbock, to the SPD caucus, to every member of the Bundestag who will eventually vote on the budgets and legislation that give this declaration meaning or render it hollow. The history is watching. The Ukrainian people are watching. The declaration was signed. Now the work begins.

Welcoming Ukrainians: the moral test of a society

Germany has received over one million Ukrainian refugees since February 2022 — the largest non-German-speaking refugee population in the country's post-war history. The German state's response has been, by historical standards, impressive: rapid registration, access to social services, school enrollment for children, legal authorization for employment. German civil society has mobilized with the generosity that characterized the 2015 refugee welcome, refined by the lessons of that earlier experience.

The Strategic Partnership Declaration's civilian dimension requires sustaining this welcome — ensuring that Ukrainian refugees in Germany are treated with dignity, supported in maintaining their cultural identity, and given the practical tools (language education, professional credential recognition, housing access) that enable them to live functional lives in Germany while maintaining the connection to Ukraine that most wish to preserve. How Germany treats Ukrainian people on its soil is the most visible, daily expression of the partnership's values dimension.

The return question: rebuilding a country worth returning to

Most Ukrainians in Germany intend to return to Ukraine when conditions allow. Germany's interest in Ukrainian reconstruction — and its interest in the reconstruction partnership's success — is therefore also an interest in creating the conditions that make Ukraine a country worth returning to: safe, economically viable, institutionally capable, and invested in by the international partners who will share the reconstruction challenge. Every German investment in Ukrainian reconstruction is an investment in a future in which Ukrainian families can return home. That investment serves both countries' interests simultaneously.

The Strategic Partnership Declaration must make this connection explicit — not treating refugees as a separate policy domain from reconstruction, but recognizing that the two dimensions are linked, that the people who know Ukraine most intimately are the ones living in German cities, and that their engagement in reconstruction planning and implementation is a resource that both countries should be mobilizing more actively than they currently are.

I think about the Ukrainian mother in Hamburg who sends her child to a German school while her husband defends Zaporizhzhia. She carries a burden that no policy paper fully captures. The Strategic Partnership Declaration is, in part, for her — a commitment that Germany will help rebuild the country she will one day return to. Making that commitment real enough for her to feel it is the human dimension of everything else this declaration promises.

The operational test

Honoring the Strategic Partnership Declaration requires translating its four pillars into operational programs within a defined timeframe. It requires annual reviews with publicly available reporting on progress against specific commitments. It requires budget lines in successive German federal budgets that demonstrate growing rather than declining financial commitment. It requires institutional infrastructure — dedicated staff in the relevant ministries, a bilateral coordination mechanism with Ukrainian counterparts, and the accountability frameworks that make neglect politically costly.

None of this happens automatically. Declarations without operational architecture decay into statement archives. The German chancellery, the relevant line ministries, and the Bundestag committees with oversight responsibility must treat the declaration's implementation as a priority management challenge — with the same seriousness that Germany brought to the Wirtschaftswunder or to the post-unification reconstruction of East Germany.

The historical obligation, restated

I close this letter by restating the historical obligation, because it is the foundation on which everything else rests. Germany has a specific obligation to Ukraine — born of historical violence, deepened by the energy dependence that helped finance the current aggression, and now expressed in the Strategic Partnership Declaration. That obligation is not discharged by a signing ceremony and a joint press conference. It is discharged by the sustained, serious, operationally grounded implementation of the commitments made on June 17, 2026.

Ukraine has been let down by declarations before. The Bucharest promise of 2008. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. The declarations that promised security and delivered ambiguity. Germany can choose to be different. The Strategic Partnership Declaration gives it the institutional framework to make that choice operational. History is watching the follow-through.

I write this with respect for Germany and faith in what Germany can be when it is most itself — serious, institutional, historically responsible, capable of sustained commitment. That Germany exists. It built the Bundesrepublik from the ashes of the Third Reich. It built European integration from the rubble of two world wars. It can build this partnership. The question is whether it will choose to build it with the seriousness that Ukraine's situation and Germany's history both require. I believe it can. I am watching to see if it will.

From declaration to action: three immediate priorities

This open letter names three immediate priorities for translating the June 17 declaration into a living reality. First priority: the promised military deliveries must be accelerated — the Patriot systems, the air defense equipment, the artillery ammunition. Every week of delay has a measurable human cost at the front. Second priority: the declaration's institutional mechanisms must be established quickly — the coordination commissions, exchange programs, and regular dialogue structures. Third: Berlin's commitment on NATO membership must translate into concrete diplomatic action at the Ankara summit and beyond.

These three priorities are not exhaustive — but they are measurable. In six months, it will be possible to see whether deliveries have been accelerated, whether institutional structures exist, whether Germany has weighed in on Ukraine's accession path. The declaration's credibility will be built or lost on exactly those measurable outcomes. Words without accountability are not commitments. They are ambitions — and ambitions alone have already failed Ukraine before.

The accountability question: who measures and who reports?

One of the most persistent failures of international declarations is the absence of structured, public follow-through. Fine documents are signed at well-attended ceremonies, and a year later no one can say with precision which commitments were honored and which were quietly shelved. The Ukraine-Germany Strategic Partnership Declaration must escape this fate. It needs publicly accessible annual reviews, with specific indicators for each pillar, reported jointly by both governments and independently verified by institutions like the Bundestag's research service or external think tanks.

The German Bundestag has a specific role to play here. Parliamentary oversight is the mechanism that makes commitments sticky across electoral cycles and coalition changes. Without Bundestag engagement — committee hearings, budget appropriations, regular progress reports — the declaration risks becoming the responsibility of whoever happens to be in government rather than an obligation of the German state. That distinction matters. Ukraine needs a partner state, not a partner government.

The accountability of international agreements — that is what is most often missing from the fine documents signed during official visits. A year after signing, how many of these commitments are actually measured and publicly evaluated? I want the Ukraine-Germany declaration to escape that fate. I want it to be possible, in a year, to read a precise and honest assessment of what was promised and what was delivered. That kind of transparency is a form of respect — for the declaration, for Ukraine, and for the people of both countries.

Four years of resistance as a moral argument

Ukraine has fought more than four years against Russia's invasion. It has lost tens of thousands of soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled their homes. Entire cities have been destroyed. These facts are not abstract statistics — they are the lived reality of a people who chose resistance over capitulation. That sacrifice deserves in return a German partner — and a Western partner more broadly — that honors its commitments with the same consistency that Ukraine has honored its resistance.

Friedrich Merz spoke the right words in Kyiv on June 17. Volodymyr Zelensky signed the right agreements. The declaration is good. Now the work begins. Not the work of rhetoric — the work of engineers, logisticians, diplomats, military trainers, investors. That invisible, daily work is what transforms a declaration into a living partnership. That is what Ukraine is asking of Germany. That is what Germany can give.

The moral weight that this partnership must carry

The moral dimension of this partnership cannot be separated from its operational one. Germany's support for Ukraine is not simply a strategic calculation, though it is that too. It carries the weight of historical obligation — the memory of what was done on Ukrainian soil in the twentieth century, and the imperative that a Germany rebuilt on the lessons of that history should stand, unreservedly, with those who suffer aggression and choose dignity over submission.

This letter does not call for guilt in place of policy. It calls for moral seriousness alongside strategic logic. The two are compatible. They reinforce each other. A Germany that supports Ukraine because it is right and because it is necessary — not one or the other, but both — is the Germany that the June 17 Declaration invites into being. That is the Germany this letter is addressed to.

I end this open letter with the same certainty with which I began it: Ukraine deserves this partnership. It earned it in the trenches, in the bomb shelters, in the meeting rooms where its diplomats negotiated for their country. Germany has understood this. Now that understanding must translate into action — not once, not seasonally, but continuously, for as long as Ukraine needs it and as long as the partnership demands it.

What must follow

The Ukraine-Germany Strategic Partnership Declaration of June 17, 2026 is a beginning, not a conclusion. It establishes the framework; the work of filling that framework with substance, budget, and institutional architecture lies ahead. The German government, the Bundestag, the German private sector, German civil society, and the German public all have roles to play in honoring what was signed — in making the declaration a living commitment rather than a historical artifact.

The call

This letter asks for the honor of commitment — for the German state to treat the Strategic Partnership Declaration with the seriousness that Ukraine's situation, Germany's history, and Europe's future collectively demand. Ukraine has earned its partners' sustained commitment through four years of extraordinary sacrifice. Germany, specifically, owes that commitment through the combined weight of historical debt, energy complicity, and the strategic imperative of a European security architecture built on democratic solidarity. The declaration is signed. Now it must be lived.

I leave this open letter in the public space with the hope that it will be read by those it addresses. Not to lecture them — but to remind them that the words of the June 17 declaration were heard in Kyiv, in Kharkiv, in Odessa, in every Ukrainian city where people are living through the consequences of this war. They heard them as a promise. A promise made by a country that can keep it. The obligation is real. The hour is now.

The declaration as a legacy for those who come after

In ten years, twenty years, today's children — Ukrainian and German — will inherit this partnership. They will receive it in the state their predecessors built it. If it has been honored, deepened, institutionalized — they will receive a solid partnership that contributed to the peace and prosperity of both countries. If it has been neglected, it will be just another text in the archives. The choice is in the hands of those who govern today.

The Ukraine-Germany Strategic Partnership Declaration of June 17, 2026 is a document for the generations. May it also be an act for the generations. That is the wish of this open letter. And it is the wish of all those who believe that freedom and democracy deserve to be defended — together, durably, unconditionally.

What the declaration owes to history

History will judge this declaration not by the words it contains but by the actions it produced. The Bucharest Summit of 2008 promised Ukraine a path to NATO and delivered ambiguity. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 promised security guarantees and was never honored when it mattered most. The June 17, 2026 Declaration can be different — if those who signed it choose to make it different. That choice, sustained over time, is what transforms a document into a durable commitment.

I set down this letter with the conviction that this partnership is both just and necessary. Just because Ukraine deserves it. Necessary because Europe needs it to be what it claims to be. I wish this declaration the durability its content deserves. And I wish Ukraine the victory — military, institutional, economic — that its courage has earned.

I set down my pen — as the old texts say — with the conviction that this partnership is just and necessary. Just because Ukraine deserves it. Necessary because Europe needs it to be what it claims to be. I wish this declaration the durability its content deserves. And I wish Ukraine the victory that its impossible courage has earned.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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