Munich Security Conference
Conference with at least 40 heads of state and government
Christoph Heusgen is expecting at least 40 heads of state and government to attend the Munich Security Conference. photo
© Jörg Carstensen/dpa
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine will be the dominant topic at the Munich Security Conference. The rush is great, but the governments of two countries have to stay outside.
Two weeks before the Munich Security Conference, around 40 heads of state and government, 90 ministers and several heads of international organizations have already confirmed their attendance.
These include French President Emmanuel Macron, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as the conference management of the German Press Agency announced on request. She left it open whether, as in the past, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and US Vice President Kamala Harris will also take part.
The world’s most important meeting of experts on security policy will take place from February 17th to 19th at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. It is the first security conference since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov are expected in Munich from the Ukraine.
Heusgen: No stage for Russian propaganda
Russian officials are not invited. “There is no sign of the Russian government giving in. We are too good to offer these war criminals in the Kremlin a stage for their propaganda with the Munich Security Conference,” said conference leader Christoph Heusgen of the dpa. But prominent Russian opposition politicians would come to Munich, including the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, the journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitri Muratov and Julia Navalnaja, the wife of the imprisoned opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
Only Iran’s opposition invited
From Iran, too, only members of the opposition and not officials have been invited this year. “We also don’t want to offer a forum to a regime that so fundamentally violates basic human rights,” says Heusgen. The security conference does not see itself as neutral. “Of course we see the Munich Security Conference as an organization that stands for rule-based politics in this international mechanism,” says Heusgen. “And that’s why I think it’s justified to deviate from the principle of inviting all countries in extreme cases like Russia and Iran.”
The former top diplomat emphasizes that Macron’s participation is very important to him in view of the recent turmoil in Franco-German relations. “Europe can only move forward if Germany and France stand together and jointly give substance to the vision of European sovereignty,” he says. He is also curious about the French perspective on various regional trouble spots, from the Sahel zone in Africa to the Indo-Pacific, where France also plays a very important role as a member of the Security Council.