Baerbock Authority
The Federal Foreign Office shakes heads internationally with a leopard emoji
“Diplomatic fiasco”: A tweet from the Federal Foreign Office with a leopard emoji was anything but witty for politicians in Africa
© Achille Abboud
The Federal Foreign Office in Berlin comments on the visit of the Russian Foreign Minister to South Africa in a tweet – using an animal emoji. This backfires.
A tweet by the Federal Foreign Office on the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to South Africa has met with massive criticism. The entry on the English-language Twitter account of the authority headed by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens). read: “Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is in Africa, not to see (leopard emoji), but to bluntly claim that Ukraine’s partners “want to destroy everything Russian”. The tweet refers to Lavrov’s allegations on Monday in South Africa that the West was at war with Russia in Ukraine.
Ebba Kalondo, spokeswoman for African Union (AU) leader Moussa Faki, asked the Federal Foreign Office on Twitter whether Africa’s people and animals were a joke for the German government. Kalondo wrote that Minister Baerbock did not look at any animals during her visit to Ethiopia in mid-January. According to numerous other comments, Africa is more than just a safari continent.
Tweet as a diplomatic failure
Spreading “appalling clichés” to score geopolitical points will not win Germany any friends, tweeted Zainab Usman, director of the US Africa Carnegie program. Other commentators called the Foreign Office’s tweet a diplomatic fiasco.
A post by political blogger John Aravosis suggested that top German diplomats may have been making a covert joke about the Leopard main battle tanks that Germany is now using to support Ukraine in the war against Russia.
The Baerbock Ministry’s Jan. 24 tweet had been viewed more than two million times, shared more than 2,200 times and commented on more than 600 times as of Friday morning.
Read at stern+: In the Ukraine, the Wagner mercenary group is fighting in Bachmut, among other places. But the Russians are also active in other regions of the world, especially in West Africa. The open-source movement “All Eyes on Wagner” monitors its activities there – with astonishing results. An interview.