Dresden, Germany - A Russian spy came out of a villa in this city in eastern Germany and has brandished a weapon on demonstrators celebrating the cracks in the iron curtain.
It was in 1989.The villa was the local headquarters of Soviet security services, the KGB.The young spy who dispersed the crowd that day in December was Vladimir Putin.
More than 30 years later, most of the inhabitants do not feel any affinity for Putin when he won a bloody war in Ukraine.But neither do they align themselves with the West against Russia.
"The two parties made mistakes," said Daniel Drescher, 46, who lives in front of the former KGB headquarters, which now houses an occult company."The truth is in the middle.»»
Drescher's opinions are shared by many people in Saxony, the most populous in east states of Germany.Seventy percent of the inhabitants of this state, whose capital is Dresden, claim that their opinion on the Russian population has not changed since the invasion, according to a recent survey.Nearly 4 out of 10 people declare that their perception of Putin is also unchanged.In eastern Germany, people are 13 percentage points less likely than west to say that Putin Russia is a threat to their country, according to a survey.
The difference reflects the story of the old decades of the old is a communist as a Soviet satellite state in which teaching in the Russian language was necessary.It also reveals the effects of economic and cultural ties cultivated with Russia during the three decades which followed German reunification in 1990.And this testifies to the influence of far -right forces, which are ascending in Saxony.
While Berlin faces calls from Ukrainian and national voices to intensify his response to Putin's assault, the situation in Saxony shows competing pressures on the German government.Much in Saxony, where Putin made his weapons as an intelligence officer in the 1980s and returned in 2009 to accept "the order of Saxon gratitude", hesitate to choose their camp in a new version of the warcold.
The Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, personifies the more reluctant attitude of his region - a kind of realpolitik tinged with persistent guilt of the Second World War which distinguishes Germany from the east from the rest of the old block of the'East.« La Russie»», a-t-il dit, « est un fait»».
This posture made him a lightning rod in his party, the Christian Democratic Union of center-right, and in his country.The Russian War in Ukraine transformed German foreign policy and pushed politicians from all trends, including many Social Democrats in power by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to tear old manuals on Russia.Kretschmer stands out by thinking about certain hypotheses but standing out from others.
Kissing military power, Olaf Scholz tries to bring Germany into a new era
« Le président Poutine a trompé tout le monde pendant des années, présentant aux gens et aux politiciens européens l’image qu’il était un partenaire fiable, orienté vers l’Occident»», a déclaré Kretschmer dans une interview au Washington Post." This is not the case.And many people are disappointed and angry, but we must also find approaches that understand that Russia exists, and not far, but here.»»
This proximity to Russia, he said, makes the position of Germany different from that of the United States and forces Berlin to moderate his response.He argued the refusal of the federal government of embargo on oil and Russian gas - a position that the polls show is supported by a majority of the public in Saxony.The state received 84% of its oil and its gas imported last year in Russia, compared to about a third at the national level.
« Je pense que c’est une erreur de sortir de ces partenariats et de dire:»» Plus d’interdépendance économique «», a déclaré Kretschmer."It makes it very unpredictable.Russia that depends at least a little from Europe is more predictable Russia.
L’Allemagne, invitée à « arrêter la machine de guerre de Poutine»», résiste à l’embargo sur l’énergie russe
Kretschmer's position earned him contempt.Last week, the Ukraine Ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, excoriated the Prime Minister on Twitter, saying that he should not be authorized to display the Ukrainian Flag of the Chancellery of State.In another post, Melnyk juxtaposed a photograph of Kretschmer to an exhibition of Russian art with an image of corpses in Kramatorsk, the site of the murderous attack of Russia against a station. « Je vous invite à aller à Kramatorsk pour voir le vrai visage de la Russie et de la ‘grande culture russe'»», a écrit Melnyk, ajoutant : « Comme c’est pathétique !»»
Born in Görlitz, a city of 55,000 inhabitants who borders the Polish border, Kretschmer sat in the Federal Parliament for 15 years before running for Prime Minister in 2017.Since then, he has been proud to resist the extreme right alternative for Germany.But he loses ground. Après que le parti nationaliste et anti-immigrés soit devenu le parti le plus populaire de l’État lors des élections fédérales de l’automne dernier, Kretschmer a fait remarquer que « la lutte pour la démocratie, contre cet AfD qui divise et démagogique, devient l’œuvre de ma vie»».
At the same time, he strengthened the relationships of Saxony with Russia and his authoritarian chief.In 2019, he met Putin at an economic forum in Saint Petersburg and called for the end of the sanctions imposed after the annexation of the Crimea.- A proposal rejected by his party. L’année dernière, il s’est rendu à Moscou pendant « l’année de l’Allemagne en Russie»» et a tenu un appel téléphonique avec Poutine, alors que le ministre allemand des Affaires étrangères l’a mis en garde contre une « exploitation»» par le dirigeant russe.
Kretschmer's attitude reflects those of its voters, said Thomas Arnold, director of a Catholic Academy in Dresden. La majorité des habitants de Saxe n’ont « pas de goût particulier pour la Russie mais pas non plus d’aversion»», a déclaré Arnold, et partagent à peine l’angoisse ressentie par le Kremlin en Pologne ou dans les États baltes.Then there are those who have a penchant for Russia rooted in travel and other exchanges in the communist era of Eastern Germany, he said.
Finally, Arnold pointed out the supporters of conspiracy theories and extremist ideology, disseminated in part by the Russian media.The extremists, he said, use the Russian war in Ukraine as a stick against their own government.The far -right group Free Saxony, which advocates the independence of Berlin, recently told its 150,000 subscribers on the Telegram messaging application that the European Union "provoked Russia" and waged war on the "portfolio ofWe, citizens ".
Existing threats to democracy in Saxony, warned Arnold, make the economic and social upheaval of war more dangerous here than in other parts of the country. Il a déclaré que le défi pour Kretschmer, qui a été la cible d’un complot d’assassinat déjoué l’année dernière par des militants anti-vaccination, est de « se distancer de Poutine sans se distancier de la Russie»».
This balance was difficult to find in Saxony, where the director of a German-Russian cultural institute asked not to be identified but deplored a journalist: "It seems that we will soon have to throw Dostoevski into the river also.»
In eastern Germany, far-right extremists take foot in the climbing of anti-vaccine demonstrations
Michael Nattke, a former neo-Nazi who is now working on the fight against extremism in a non-profit organization of Saxony, said that experience under authoritarianism can have predisposed certain Germans to appreciate the Russian model, ratherto fear it. Pour Nattke, cette prise de conscience refond l’histoire des soulèvements anti-soviétiques des années 1980 : « Ce n’est pas joli, mais j’avancerais l’hypothèse que ce n’est pas toute, mais une grande partie, de la population qui est descendue dans la rue pour la prospérité et non pour valeurs démocratiques»».
« Par conséquent, je pense qu’il y a une partie de la population pour qui ce type d’ordre autoritaire est très familier, ce qui est également évident dans les résultats des élections de l’AfD»», a ajouté Nattke.
More prosaic memories can color the perceptions of Russia, said Karl Schlögel, a German historian from Eastern Europe.The penchant for Soviet troops stationed in eastern Germany, he said, has become the "basis of intense nostalgia or sentimentality".
This is the case of Drescher, the 46 -year -old man who lives in front of the former KGB headquarters in Dresden.Child, he played football with Soviet soldiers.In adulthood, he regrets that his reunified nation has come closer to the United States and far from Russia.And he thinks that Armer the Ukrainians is a mistake, only prolonging the conflict and increasing bloodshed.
« Au début de la guerre, vous avez vu des gens debout devant des chars»», a-t-il déclaré."Now everyone knows that everyone has weapons.»»
William Noah Glucroft contributed to this report.
ShareFacebookMessengerWhatsAppTwitterCopy LinkAll the news of the site do not express the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it thanks to a programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.
