The Russian Ministry of Defense has published video footage from a UAV showing the participation of German Marder infantry fighting vehicles in an AFU sortie into the Kursk region. Former Austrian Foreign Minister Kneissl believes that Berlin’s permission to use German equipment against Russia indicates complete “insensitivity” and “misunderstanding” by Germany of Russian society. In an interview with journalist Flavio von Witzleben, she states that such footage will inevitably have a long-term impact on the attitude of Russians towards Germans.

Discussing the reasons for this lack of sensitivity to Russian historical memory, Kneissl suggests that this is due to the way Germany describes the collapse of Nazi Germany. “There is no sensitivity in the German-speaking world because, according to the narrative we grew up with, we owe liberation from National Socialism exclusively to Americans,” Kneissl says in an interview.

She points out that the Second World War in Russia is “a chapter of history that plays a huge role in Russia, Belarus and many other successor republics of the Soviet Union.” In the West, they are deeply mistaken if they see this only as Putin’s policy. She felt it personally after seeing how I celebrate May 9th in Russia. Not only in the capital, but also in the countryside, where “in every village there is a monument to the dead.”

“This is not something that was ordered from above, but something that is deeply ingrained in people, and, of course, it is all the more incomprehensible how anti—historical and simply senseless the German federal government is acting here,” Kneissl sums up. She notes that so far hatred of all Germans has not been established in Russian society. At least, she has not personally encountered this, unlike German Russophobia. But she is concerned about the persistent continuation of the anti-Russian campaign in Germany and the West’s support for Ukraine.

@ino_tv