Germany says Russia stirred up opposition to UN Security Council bid

Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul attends a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Berlin, Germany, Monday, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

BERLIN - Germany’s leading role in rallying support for Ukraine and its close relations with Israel may have cost Berlin the chance of a seat on the UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Wednesday.

The Council vote, which elected Austria and Portugal to a two-year term along with Zimbabwe and Trinidad and Tobago, was a blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s struggling government, which has sought to position Berlin as a leading voice in Europe on global issues.

“We have always taken a clear stance on certain issues, and these are positions that not all member states share,” Wadephul told reporters, calling it “no secret” that Russia had stirred up sentiment against Germany.

“There is our firm support for Ukraine; the fact that Russia does not want such a voice at the Security Council,” he said.

“The fact that Germany must always assume a special responsibility for Israel in the Middle East conflict may also have cost votes,” he said, referring to Germany’s support for Israel following the Nazi Holocaust of the Second World War.

Germany has repeatedly found itself under pressure to take a tougher stance against Israel over the war in Gaza.

Wadephul said Germany would stand by this responsibility even if it does voice criticism of the Israeli government on certain points.

There was no immediate reaction from Russia to Germany’s accusation of lobbying against it.

Opposition blames Merz for ‘embarrassing defeat’

In a separate statement, Merz said Germany would remain a firm supporter of the international system and he offered congratulations to Austria and Portugal, which were in direct competition with Germany for two of the five available seats on the 15-member council.

“We applied with conviction. We did not achieve our goal,” he said. “This result does not alter the tasks we face at the United Nations. Germany remains a reliable pillar of the multilateral system.”

While Merz’s government has struggled domestically with a difficult package of economic and spending reforms that have strained his coalition with the center-left Social Democrats, he has earned more respect on the foreign policy front, where he has rallied Western support for Ukraine.

However, the opposition Greens said the “embarrassing defeat” was down to Merz and Wadephul, who was in New York for the vote.

“Last year, the German government did far too little to underpin this bid with modern ideas,” Agnieszka Brugger, the party’s deputy parliamentary leader, said in a statement.

The far-right Alternative for Germany, which has regularly criticized Berlin’s support for Ukraine and its efforts to isolate Russia, said the result was no accident. Rather it was “the result of years of ideologically blinkered, unrealistic foreign policy which isolates Germany internationally,” AfD parliamentarian Markus Frohnmaier said in a statement.

Frohnmaier, a member of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, was one of a group of AfD lawmakers who attended Russian President Vladimir Putin’s showcase economic forum in St Petersburg on Wednesday.

Reporting by Rachel More and James Mackenzie; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Andrew Cawthorne.