conflict
Russia’s parliamentary leader warns of a third world war
Vyacheslav Volodin accuses Western governments of supporting genocidal policies in Ukraine. photo
© -/The State Duma, The Federal Assembly of The Russian Federation/AP/dpa
Exactly 80 years ago, a siege by the German Wehrmacht around Leningrad ended. Russia’s parliamentary leader is using this as an opportunity to shoot against Germany and the West.
He accused Western governments, including explicitly the federal government under Olaf Scholz, of supporting a policy of genocide in Ukraine. “This is a dangerous path that could lead to a new world war.”
Russia justifies its almost two-year war of aggression against Ukraine by claiming, among other things, that it has to “denazify” the neighboring country. Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly uses historical comparisons with the Second World War to justify his attack on the neighboring country.
He equates the invasion of Ukraine he ordered with the defense of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany’s criminal war of aggression. Especially on anniversaries, Moscow uses the argument of “defending the memory of the war dead” for its war propaganda.
Blockade 80 years ago
Exactly 80 years ago, on January 27, 1944, Soviet troops broke through the German Wehrmacht’s siege ring around Leningrad, today’s St. Petersburg. Previously, German troops had deliberately caused the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million people. They died from bombing, hunger and cold.
Germany’s ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, characterized the blockade as “a particularly shocking and brutal war crime in the midst of the criminal attack on the Soviet Union.”