Annalena Baerbock: Germany's Foreign Minister and Ukraine's Clearest Voice in Berlin

Who Is Baerbock?

Annalena Charlotte Alma Baerbock (born 15 December 1980 in Hannover) is a German politician who served as Federal Foreign Minister from December 2021 to early 2025. She is co-leader of the German Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and was the party's candidate for Chancellor in the September 2021 federal election — the first time the Greens had fielded a chancellor candidate.

Baerbock studied political science at the University of Hamburg and international law at the London School of Economics. Her academic background in international law shaped her approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict: she often framed German and European responses in terms of legal obligations, rules-based international order, and the responsibility to protect principles.

Her four-year tenure as Foreign Minister was defined almost entirely by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She was the most publicly vocal member of Scholz's coalition government on Ukraine support, often saying in public what Scholz was not willing to say — and sometimes saying things that created diplomatic complications.

Political Rise in the Greens

Baerbock joined the Greens in 2005 and rose through Brandenburg state party structures before entering the Bundestag in 2013. She focused initially on climate and energy policy — the party's core issues — before transitioning to foreign and security policy as the Greens became more clearly Atlanticist and more hawkish on Russia in the 2010s.

In 2018, she and Robert Habeck were elected as co-chairs of the national Green party, a dual leadership model characteristic of the Greens. Under their joint leadership, the party surged in polls from its traditional 8–10% range to high teens and above by 2021, driven by climate anxiety and dissatisfaction with Germany's grand coalition.

Baerbock was known within the party as the more foreign-policy-focused of the two co-chairs, while Habeck concentrated more on economic and energy transitions. Her stances on NATO, the rules-based international order, and engagement with authoritarian states like Russia and China were notably harder-edged than traditional Green positions.

The 2021 Chancellor Campaign — High Point and Stumble

In April 2021, the Greens nominated Baerbock as their candidate for Chancellor — a historic first for the party. Initial polls showed the Greens leading or tied for first place, generating significant excitement. She became one of the most discussed politicians in Europe for several weeks.

The campaign subsequently ran into serious difficulties. Accusations emerged that her CV contained inaccuracies, that passages in her book "Jetzt" had been plagiarized, and that she had failed to declare supplemental income to the Bundestag. She acknowledged mistakes but rejected the most serious accusations. The Greens' poll numbers fell from their peak, and they ultimately finished third in the September 2021 election with 14.8%.

Despite the difficult campaign, Baerbock negotiated effectively in the three-way coalition talks that produced the "traffic light" coalition of SPD, FDP, and Greens. The Greens secured the Foreign Ministry and Environment Ministry, with Baerbock taking the top diplomatic post.

Foreign Minister — A Feminist Foreign Policy

Baerbock set out early in her tenure to practice what she called "feminist foreign policy" — a framework that prioritizes the rights and representation of women, civil society actors, and marginalized communities in diplomatic engagement, and rejects purely state-centric realpolitik.

She appointed a more diverse team at the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Ministry) than her predecessors, and engaged with civil society organizations in conflict zones more deliberately than had been customary. She connected feminist foreign policy to the Ukraine war through the lens of Russian sexual violence as a weapon of war and the specific targeting of Ukrainian civilians.

In her early months in office, she also had to manage the Nordstream 2 pipeline controversy — a proposed gas pipeline between Russia and Germany that Baerbock had opposed while in opposition. The Biden administration removed sanctions opposition in a deal with Germany in summer 2021, but Baerbock's personal opposition to the pipeline gave her credibility later when Germany had to rapidly abandon Russian energy dependence.

When the War Began — The Zeitenwende

Russia's full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022 transformed Baerbock's tenure. Germany's initial refusal to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine — a policy Baerbock inherited — came under intense pressure. Germany's initial offer of 5,000 helmets to Ukraine was widely mocked, and Baerbock found herself defending a policy she herself found inadequate.

The pressure from within the coalition — Greens and FDP both wanted more assertive Ukraine support — and from Poland, the Baltic states, and the United Kingdom eventually led Chancellor Scholz to declare a "Zeitenwende" (historic turning point) in a 27 February 2022 Bundestag speech, announcing a major shift in Germany's defense and foreign policy. The €100 billion special defense fund and the pivot away from Russian energy were announced as part of this package.

Baerbock threw herself into the coordination work after the Zeitenwende — managing EU sanctions packages, coordinating with Western partners on weapons supply, and representing Germany in multilateral Ukraine support forums. She was one of the first German officials to visit Kyiv after the invasion, making a trip in May 2022 to signal solidarity.

The Weapons Debate — Baerbock vs. Scholz's Caution

Throughout 2022–2024, one of the persistent tensions in German government Ukraine policy was between the Foreign Ministry (and Defense Ministry) on one hand, and the Chancellor's Office on the other. Scholz was consistently more cautious about weapons supply than Baerbock or Pistorius, citing fears of escalation and direct German engagement in the war.

Baerbock publicly supported supplying Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine in late 2022 and early 2023, before Scholz agreed to the delivery in January 2023. Her willingness to say publicly what Scholz had not yet decided created awkward moments for the coalition but also applied pressure that contributed to eventual decisions.

She was less vocal about specific weapon systems than Defense Minister Pistorius — her portfolio was diplomacy rather than defense procurement — but her public support for maximalist Ukraine assistance was consistent. She was generally seen as part of the "deliver more" camp within the coalition, alongside the FDP and the Greens' parliamentary group.

The "At War" Statement — January 2023

In January 2023, during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg, Baerbock made a statement that reverberated internationally. Speaking in the context of European solidarity with Ukraine and the need for continued arms supply, she said: "We are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other."

The remark was immediately seized upon by Russian state media, which presented it as an admission that Germany was a belligerent in the conflict — providing propaganda material for claims that NATO was conducting a "proxy war" against Russia through Ukraine. It sparked criticism in Germany, where Scholz had been careful to avoid any language suggesting direct German participation in the war.

Baerbock and the German government clarified that she had been speaking about collective European determination to support Ukraine, not asserting that Germany was a combatant. The episode illustrated the inherent tension in Germany's position: deeply engaged in supporting Ukraine militarily while formally insisting it was not a party to the conflict. Critics of Russian propaganda noted that Russia constantly alleged Western "proxy war" regardless of what European officials said — the statement merely gave them a convenient soundbite.

The Taurus Missile Controversy

The most contentious German weapons decision of the entire war was Scholz's refusal to supply Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. The Taurus KEPD 350 is a joint German-Swedish precision long-range cruise missile with a range of approximately 500 km, capable of striking hardened targets including bridges, command centers, and infrastructure deep in Russian rear areas.

Ukraine requested Taurus missiles in 2023 as it sought to extend its strike capability beyond the ATACMS range of 300 km and to complement Franco-British Storm Shadow/SCALP deliveries. The Bundestag passed a non-binding motion in late 2023 calling for Taurus delivery, and polling showed majority German public support.

Scholz refused, citing his concern that Taurus delivery would require German personnel involvement in target planning, making Germany a direct party to the conflict. A leaked Bundeswehr generals' conversation in early 2024 — which discussed among other things how Taurus could be used against the Kerch Bridge — intensified the controversy. Scholz used the leaked discussion as further argument for his refusal: if German officers were discussing targeting, delivery would inevitably implicate Germany operationally.

Baerbock's position on Taurus was never made wholly explicit — she was careful to maintain coalition discipline on official positions — but multiple reports and her general stance on weapons supply suggested she was in the "deliver" camp, constrained by Scholz's veto. The Taurus controversy became a focal point for broader criticism of Scholz's Ukraine leadership.

Tensions with Scholz — A Different Foreign Policy Vision

Baerbock and Scholz represented genuinely different traditions within German politics on Russia. Scholz came from the SPD's Ostpolitik tradition — the doctrine, developed under Willy Brandt, that engagement with Communist East Germany and the Soviet Union was preferable to confrontation, and that economic interdependence created peace. This tradition had become deeply embedded in SPD thinking and in German business community attitudes toward Russia.

Baerbock's Greens had a more ambivalent relationship with Ostpolitik. While the Greens had historically opposed nuclear weapons and NATO expansion, the post-Cold War Greens under her leadership had moved toward a clearer values-based foreign policy that prioritized human rights and rejected accommodation of authoritarian states regardless of economic benefits.

On practical terms, the differences manifested in the pace of weapons decisions, the willingness to speak clearly about Russian war crimes, the handling of Russia-related sanctions (Baerbock favored aggressive sanctions enforcement), and the question of whether negotiations were desirable before Ukraine had recovered sufficient territory. Baerbock consistently argued that negotiating from weakness rewarded aggression.

International Courts and ICC Advocacy

Baerbock's international law background expressed itself in her vigorous support for International Criminal Court proceedings against Russian leadership. Germany was among the states that referred the situation in Ukraine to the ICC Prosecutor, and Baerbock publicly welcomed the March 2023 ICC arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Children's Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the deportation of Ukrainian children.

She consistently argued that accountability was not separate from the peace process but a precondition for durable peace. "There can be no sustainable peace without justice," she said repeatedly in EU and G7 contexts. She supported the creation of the Special Tribunal for Aggression against Ukraine — a proposed international body to prosecute the crime of aggression specifically, which falls outside the ICC's jurisdiction over current situations.

She also used her legal training to engage substantively with debates about whether supplying weapons to Ukraine constituted complicity in violations of international humanitarian law — the argument sometimes advanced by critics. Her consistent answer was that, under international law, Ukraine had the right of self-defense and that supplying a state exercising legitimate self-defense was itself lawful.

Coalition Collapse, Elections, and Legacy

The "traffic light" coalition fell apart in November 2024 over budget disputes unrelated to Ukraine policy — specifically, the FDP's refusal to agree to relaxing Germany's constitutional "debt brake" to fund a transition fund. Scholz dismissed FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the coalition collapsed, and Germany entered an early election period.

Baerbock continued as caretaker Foreign Minister through the period. Germany's February 2025 federal election resulted in Friedrich Merz's CDU/CSU winning and forming a coalition with the SPD, ending the traffic light coalition era. Baerbock did not enter the new government.

Her legacy in German foreign policy will hinge partly on how the Ukraine war resolves. Supporters argue she pushed Germany toward a clearer, more honest Ukraine policy than Scholz would have reached alone, and that her advocacy for accountability and rules-based order represented a genuine shift in German foreign policy tradition. Critics argue the coalition was too fragmented to produce coherent policy and that Germany's Ukraine position remained insufficient throughout.

What is not in dispute is that under Baerbock's tenure, Germany's foreign policy engagement with Ukraine — its weapons supply, its sanctions coordination, its diplomatic leadership — increased substantially from where it had been when she took office. The Zeitenwende was Scholz's announcement but the policy it generated was implemented in part through her ministry.

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