“You New Nazis!” This is how the Kremlin reacts to the German Leopard tanks Sweden is overtaken by a wave of violence – the background

Vladimir Solovyov cannot stop roaring. “Scholtz!” he shouts. “Baerbock!” “Pistorian!” “You new Nazis! You European Pharisees, you! Nazi scum!” As soon as the first reports of Germany’s Leopard tank promise to Ukraine appear on his Tuesday night program, Solovyov gasps with rage and, as he has often done in the past, calls for retaliation.

It is above all the symbolism that enables the Russian agitators to draw on Germany to the fullest. “At least they shouldn’t paint over the swastikas,” says RT boss Margarita Simonyan and isn’t too bad about further blunders. “After the US whips, they deliver the tanks. Deliveries of gas chambers are expected by summer,” she writes on her Telegram channel.

In his live broadcast on Wednesday, Solovyov speaks of the “denazification” of Germany. Russian President Vladimir Putin used the word “denazification” on February 24 to justify the attack on Ukraine. It represents the devastating blows of the Russian army.

The Kremlin criticizes the planned tank deliveries as militarily useless but politically extremely dangerous. “These tanks will burn like any other,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. There is no longer “substantial dialogue” between Germany, the EU and NATO, he said. However, there has been no dialogue since the start of Russia’s “special military operation,” as Moscow euphemistically calls its war of annihilation against Ukraine. Now Moscow speaks of a “nadir” in relations.

America as the main culprit

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova – her choice of words is as grotesque and strident as the propagandists on Russian state television – as usual sees the US as the main culprit and sees the Europeans as naive. This is the standard official Moscow story. “Does Germany not understand that the US is dragging Europe into a major war? Europe must wake up from its lethargic sleep as soon as possible,” she advises.

The speaker of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, like the cynic Solovyov, who is loyal to the Kremlin, threatens to use a nuclear attack. He praises the “superiority of Russian weapons” and appeals to the “sense of responsibility for humanity”. Attempts to “conquer our territories,” Volodin writes in his Telegram channel, would lead to countermeasures with more powerful weapons. “Everyone must understand: it will end in a tragedy that will destroy the countries that make such decisions,” it read.

Moscow officially sees itself as a continuation of its World War II struggle. The importance of the patriotic war for the country, as the Russians call it, is the only thing that society of all ages and social classes can agree on. The Kremlin exploits the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany and likes to play down the involvement of the Allies. Or don’t mention them at all.

So it is easy for the Russian propagadists to paint the German government as the top Nazis from whom the Ukrainians learned. “Everyone at the front calls the enemy ‘Germans’, it doesn’t matter which Nazis they are: Ukrainian, Polish, Colombian,” Solovyov claims in his live broadcast. The battle in Ukraine is the “repetition of World War II”. (aargauerzeitung.ch)