From shop fronts spattered with paint to insults thrown in the street, attacks on the Russian community in Germany have spiked since the start of the war in Ukraine.
As a result, some Russians have staged demonstrations “against Russophobia” in the form of vehicle convoys across the nation, which has the largest Russian diaspora in the EU, but the demonstrations have sparked a backlash, with many interpreting them as a show of support for Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.
Christian Freier, 40, has been sent hundreds of death threats a day since helping to organize a 400-strong vehicle convoy in Berlin earlier this month, along with images of burned and mutilated corpses.
Photo: AFP
The Web site of his vehicle repair shop was hacked and his online ratings have plummeted.
“My life is hell,” said Freier, who has both Russian and German citizenship.
The demonstration was largely peaceful and apolitical, although one woman was arrested for displaying the letter “Z,” a symbol of support for the Russian army and now banned in Berlin.
“My aim was only to protest against the daily aggression suffered by Russians in Germany,” Freier said, declining to answer any questions about the conflict itself.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, 383 anti-Russian and 181 anti-Ukrainian crimes have been officially reported to German police.
Germany is home to about 1.2 million Russians and 325,000 Ukrainians, plus more than 316,000 who have arrived as refugees since the start of the conflict.
“All war is awful and can never be justified,” said Rene Hermann, 50, who also helped to organize the Berlin convoy.
Hermann runs a blog on TikTok with thousands of subscribers.
His account was suspended after he repeatedly spread pro-Kremlin propaganda.
“The motives for taking part in these demonstrations are very diverse,” said Jochen Toepfer, a sociologist at Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg and an expert on Russian society.
“They were organized as demonstrations against discrimination in Germany, but there were certainly also fans of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, as well as people who don’t necessarily like Putin, but don’t want to see their country discredited, despite the war,” he said.
Though it was billed as apolitical, the Berlin demonstration provoked a wave of indignation in Germany, with newspaper Bild calling it a “parade of shame.”
“For heaven’s sake, how could you allow this convoy of shame in the middle of Berlin?” Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk asked of Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey.
Giffey replied that she understood his anger, but could not penalize people for merely waving Russian flags.
The security authorities are “closely monitoring the extent to which Russian, but also Ukrainian, citizens are at risk in Germany,” German Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser said last week.
“We must be very careful that this war is not imported into our society,” she said.
That is unlikely to happen, Free University of Berlin postdoctoral researcher Tobias Rupprecht said.
“Most Russians here have a much more critical view of the conflict and tend to be much more Westernized than Russians in Russia,” he said.
However, “the longer the war goes on, the greater the risk that more crimes will be committed in this context in Germany,” Toepfer added.
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