German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has warned against equating Russia with President Vladimir Putin. “It was not the Russian people who made the fatal decision to invade Ukraine, MIA writes.
This war is Putin’s war,” Scholz said on Thursday evening at an event organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in honour of Social Democrat (SPD) politician Egon Bahr, who would have turned 100 on Friday. “This differentiation is important. It is important in order not to jeopardize the reconciliation between Germans and Russians after World War II,” Scholz stressed.
It is also important for living together with Russians and Ukrainians in Germany. “And it is important to show one thing to the courageous Russian men and women who are taking to the streets at great personal risk to protest Putin’s war of aggression: You are not alone. We stand with you.”
This other Russia is the foundation for German-Russian relations in the future. SPD politician Egon Bahr, who died in 2015, is considered the architect of former chancellor Willy Brandt’s policy called Ostpolitik in German, which resulted in treaties with the former East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union.
