Pro-Russian protests in Germany
Several pro-Russian rallies were held this weekend in Germany at the initiative of the country’s large Russian-speaking community, which considers itself to be the victim of discrimination since the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
Around 600 people, waving a tide of Russian tricolor flags, gathered in central Frankfurt on Sunday under the slogan “against hate and harassment”, noted AFP. As many people were gathered at the same time in Hanover, in the north of the country, at the call of members of the Russian-speaking community, local police told AFP. The day before, similar demonstrations had been held in Lübeck, in northern Germany, with 150 participants, according to the police, as well as in Stuttgart.
In Frankfurt, protesters first found themselves near the city’s banking district, facing a pro-Ukraine counter-demonstration of around 100 people, the two camps separated by a large police cordon.
The pro-Russian demonstration set off to reach, according to the organizers, the main cemetery of the city and lay flowers there on the graves of Soviet soldiers who died during the Second World War. At the head of the procession one could read on a banner: “Truth and Diversity of Opinion rather than PROPAGANDA”.
In Hanover, where the pro-ruse protesters organized a car convoy, under close police surveillance, a counter-demonstration gathered 3,500 people under the slogan “Support Ukraine! »according to the police.
The day before, in Lübeck the police had ended up stopping a similar convoy of about sixty vehicles because “violations of the law”specifically “the display of support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the use of prohibited symbols”local police said.
The German authorities fear that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will be imported into German territory.
Germany has 1.2 million people originating, themselves or their families, from Russia, and 325,000 from Ukraine, to which must be added the arrival over the past month of more than 316,000 Ukrainian refugees.
The proliferation of demonstrations denouncing the « russophobie » who would have won Germany has provoked a lively debate in the country, because the authorities see in it a danger of instrumentalization for the benefit of the theses defended by Moscow in this war. Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the police have recorded 383 anti-Russian crimes and 181 anti-Ukrainian crimes.