Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party says it sees no need for changes to the German leader's often-criticized approach to the war in Ukraine after an election in Germany's most populous state brought a clear defeat for his center-left Social Democrats.
Germany's main opposition party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union, took 35.7% of the vote to win Sunday'sin North Rhine-Westphalia state, home to nearly 18 million people. It finished nine points ahead of Scholz's Social Democrats, despite expectations of a closer race in what was long a center-left stronghold.
Scholz declared in February that the Russian invasion of Ukraine marked a “turning point” and announced a big increase in military spending. The German government broke with tradition to supply arms to Ukraine, but the chancellor faced criticism from the opposition and parts of his own coalition for initially hesitating to send heavy weapons and for sometimes appearing indecisive.
He said he saw clear support during the campaign for the policy of “delivering weapons but also weighing things up, for not turning off the gas tap overnight so as not to endanger jobs in an industrial state like North Rhine-Westphalia.” “The government's policy has made clear that we stand beside Ukraine without ifs or buts, but we allowed there to be too much talk about weapons deliveries and too little about rising living costs and too little about rising energy prices,” Klingbeil said.
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