Andrey Melnik is planning to personally apologize to Olaf Scholz over the liverwurst affair
Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andrey Melnik, has revealed he “regrets” calling the country’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, an “offended liverwurst” back in May. The diplomat made the admission while speaking to German newspaper Der Spiegel on Wednesday.
“That’s a statement that I regretted later, of course. I’ll apologize to [Scholz] personally,” Melnik said.
The ambassador had described Scholz as an “offended liverwurst” over his refusal to pay a visit to Kiev back in May. Scholz’s decision was prompted by Kiev’s refusal to receive German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in mid-April over his apparently overly close ties with Russia.
Melnik had previously stood by his liverwurst remark, explicitly refusing to apologize for it. “It’s not a matter of apologizing. It’s not about whether someone feels offended or not, it’s about whether they will help us save people,” Melnik said shortly after insulting Scholz.
Unlike other top EU politicians, who have been coming to Kiev since early April, Scholz visited Ukraine for the first time since the conflict broke out in late February only last week. The German leader met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alongside other European leaders, namely French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.
Melnik also revealed that his “diplomatically inappropriate” liverwurst remark “offended many people, and not only in Germany,” as it landed the diplomat in hot water at home as well. Namely, Zelensky “was not amused” by the liverwurst remark, Melnik revealed.
The diplomat has repeatedly harshly criticized German leaders over the purported lack of support from Berlin amid the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow. The anger his ‘diplomatic style’ invoked in Germany, however, has not affected his “love” for the country, Melnik insisted.
“Despite everything that we have to hear from many Germans today in these days of war: I still love Germany as a country,” he said.
LIMA, Jun 22 (IPS) – “They mustn’t stop looking for her,” said Patricia Acosta, mother of Estéfhanny Díaz, who went missing on Apr. 24, 2016, along with her five-year-old and eight-month-old daughters, after attending a children’s birthday party in Mi Perú, a town in the coastal province of Callao, next to the Peruvian capital.
The hardest hit areas were remote farming villages in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika. “All the village completely is destroyed,” said one man, showing collapsed homes on a cell phone video.
US president has said there’s going to be a second pandemic and that the country needs more money to prepare
The US needs more money to plan for “the second pandemic,” President Joe Biden said during a press briefing on Tuesday, as he praised his government’s efforts to ensure children under five can get Covid-19 vaccines.
Biden also hailed as “a very historic milestone” that the US has become the first country in the world to offer “safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old.”
When asked about how long the administration could keep up the new vaccine campaign, Biden suggested that the current budget would be enough to “get through at least this year” but stressed that “we do need more money.”
He went on to insist that he needed even more money for an unspecified “second pandemic.”“We need more money to plan for the second pandemic. There’s going to be another pandemic,” the president warned, without going into detail about what this new wave might entail.
Biden also took the opportunity to take a swipe at his predecessor, implying that Donald Trump’s lack of preparation increased the impact of the Covid pandemic. “We have to think ahead. That’s not something the last outfit did very well and that’s something we’ve been doing fairly well. That’s why we need the money,” surmised Biden.
Some health experts and agencies such as the World Health Organization have also warned of the likelihood of future pandemics. The WHO had previously announced that it plans to confirm a global pandemic treaty at the 2024 World Health Assembly, which it hopes will help “set out the objectives and fundamental principles in order to structure the necessary collective action to fight pandemics.”
The agreement, which heavily focuses on increased surveillance, vaccinations and “restoring trust in the international health system,” would legally bind its members under international law, superseding regulations of individual countries in an effort to get all nations to act as one in the face of a future outbreak.
