On the occasion of the 77th commemorations of the end of the Second World War, these May 8 and 9, Berlin (Germany) is like an enormous pot. This Sunday, the police have identified more than thirty demonstrations. Because of the war in Ukraine, the pro-Russian gatherings celebrating the Soviet victory of 1945 are particularly agitated. Like this group of Russian bikers, the “Night Wolves” known for their loyalty to Vladimir Putin.
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These regulars of May 9 in the German capital have already loudly let it be known that they were in town on Thursday, and have submitted a new request for a demonstration for this Monday. They do not speak to the press but comply with the police who ask them to remove from their jackets the ribbon of Saint-Georges, with orange and black stripes, this symbol of the victory of the Red Army, which today has become that of patriotism. advocated by the Kremlin. Anyone who wears it in Russia shows their support for the war in Ukraine.
The police apply in Berlin a last minute decision of the municipality: prohibition to brandish this ribbon, the symbol “Z” or flags, whether Russian, Soviet or Ukrainian. As if the authorities refused to take a clear position and placed all the demonstrators on the same level. It’s a “slap in the face to Ukraine”said the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, speaking of a 25-meter-long flag that the police had folded and rolled up for long seconds, under the “Glory to Ukraineprotesters. On the other side of the avenue, other groups call the Ukrainian ambassador a Nazi, asking him to leave the scene: “Melnyk Raus” (Melnyk out!).
“I’m ashamed to be Russian”, says political scientist Sergey Medvedev, head of a Berlin association that works to strengthen civil societies in the former socialist countries of the Soviet Union. The situation despairs him, the Russian-speaking community in Germany – around two and a half million people – is according to him divided: “Russian television and media linked to the Kremlin play a very important role in German domestic political life. We saw it during the coronavirus pandemic. And once again, now, with this war.”
“The main problem is that Russian television is not a media. It is only a pure propaganda channel which aims to orient public opinion.”
Sergey Medvedev, political scientistat franceinfo
“And it’s been going on for ten years, continues Sergey Medvedev, even more since 2014 and the first war in Ukraine, this very aggressive propaganda is unfortunately quite successful.” The fear of political science, like others here in Berlin, is that this conflict lasts and that it polarizes more and more, that it exacerbates the tensions within the German population.