Esteemed soldiers,

Esteemed staff members of the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Police,

Esteemed family members,

I, too, would like to say a big thank you also on behalf of the Federal Government and the entire German Bundestag – because there has never been a Bundeswehr mission where all Members of the Bundestag voted in favour or only a few abstained but none voted against it.

A warm welcome back home – from a mission in which you together brought more than 700 men, women and children, from Germany and 40 other countries around the world, to safety from great danger. When planning this mission together in the basement of the Federal Foreign Office over the last few days, it was up to us, ultimately also with the Federal Chancellor in mind, the Federal Minister of Defence and myself and other colleagues, to take this difficult decision, weighing up the risks, coordinating with international partners, before deciding: let’s do this. Now we can evacuate German citizens.

But we only took this decision. It was you who carried out this operation. It was you, as soldiers, as colleagues from the Federal Foreign Office and from the Federal Police in the crisis support team, who flew directly into this dangerous crisis – with all the risks and imponderables that it entails. Knowing that your families and friends back home were worried about you. And we’re all more than relieved that you all made it back safely. But we saw how risky this mission was from the fact that a French soldier was injured. And that, as we heard, a Turkish aircraft came under fire. Therefore, despite the fact that some of you have said to us just now that that’s why you do this job, it shows that this is anything but a normal job.

When you hug your loved ones tonight, you can do so in the knowledge that you have saved lives through your courageous and professional efforts. All of us owe a debt of gratitude to you for this. This evening, we can also express our thanks on behalf of the hundreds of men, women and children who have been evacuated and who have already been able to hug their families again in the last few days.

We have just heard from the people who coordinated the whole operation on the ground at the airport, in the crisis support team, but also from many soldiers, that it wasn’t just a question of flying in, not just getting out of the city, but especially the situation there on the tarmac: how people went without water for hours in temperatures of over 50 degrees. The youngest people who you evacuated were two-day-old twin babies. This successful evacuation was the result of excellent teamwork between the Federal Ministry of Defence, the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Police, as well as the Federal Intelligence Service. I would also like to express my thanks for this, especially to you, Boris Pistorius. My thanks also go to our international partners, with whom we worked extremely well together.

This is your evening. You saved more than 700 lives.