After Olaf Scholz’s visit to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at the press conference of a “genocide” in the Donbass, thereby repeating a propaganda lie. The Chancellor commented on this only afterwards.
At a distance of six meters, Chancellor Scholz and Kremlin chief Putin are talking in Moscow about the worst crisis in Europe for decades. It’s about war or peace. In the end, the eagerly awaited one-to-one talk ended faster than expected, maybe even better than expected, at least the war seems to have moved a little further away.
“Genocide” in Eastern Ukraine?
During the press conference that followed, however, the fundamentally different perspectives of the two heads of government kept flashing up. When Putin once again accuses NATO of hostility and uses the bombing of Belgrade as an example, Scholz drives into his parade – and says that at the end of the Kosovo conflict, genocide could have been prevented. Putin then claims that there is a “genocide” in eastern Ukraine today. A genocide in the Donbass?
The claim is not new, but remains unproven. The Russian president has said more than once that the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine is threatened by “ethnic cleansing” and that developments are even taking on more and more “genocide” traits. This type of terror propaganda is also spread by the state media, for example by the “Rossiya Sevodnya” news agency, whose boss recently reported that civilians in the region were “tortured and cruelly killed”.
As early as 2014, Russian broadcasters such as “RT” claimed that Ukraine was committing crimes against the Russian minority in the border area – the Kremlin used this to justify invading Ukraine, among other things. The leader of the EPP parliamentary group in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, said at the end of last year that he was concerned about this propaganda: “Words prepare deeds. Putin speaks of a genocide in the Donbass, which could then be used to justify a war.”
Scholz later objected
Russia sees itself not only as a protective power for the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine, but also for those in other neighboring countries and former Soviet republics. Like Latvia. Almost 30 percent of the population there is of Russian origin, in Estonia it is around a quarter. One of the reasons why the small Baltic countries became members of NATO was to prevent Russia’s “protecting power” from gaining access.
At the joint press conference in the Kremlin, Olaf Scholz refrained from openly contradicting the president on this matter. But later he did it in front of journalists. “That’s a strong word, but it’s wrong,” said Scholz.
Sources:DPA, , “”, “”
Source: Stern
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