Commemoration in Leningrad
Lambsdorff finds Nazi comparison “completely absurd”
January 27, 2024, 4:08 p.m
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Russia repeatedly compares the government in Ukraine with the Nazi rule in Germany. The German ambassador, Count Lambsdorff, now firmly rejects this. 80 years after the end of the German siege of Leningrad, he remembers the Russian victims.
In St. Petersburg, Russia, the German ambassador Alexander Graf Lambsdorff took part in the commemoration of the German siege of the city in World War II. The diplomat laid a wreath at the Piskarevskoye military cemetery. “We are standing here in the largest war cemetery in the world. There are 490,000 people here who died as a result of a German war crime,” he told ntv.
The troops of Nazi Germany had tried to starve the city. Exactly 80 years ago, on January 27, 1944, Soviet troops broke through the Wehrmacht’s siege ring around Leningrad, today’s St. Petersburg. German troops deliberately caused the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million people. They died from bombing, hunger and cold. The siege lasted almost 900 days.
“The Russians saved this city and are proud of it. That’s why this is honest emotion that we see. It’s very moving,” continued Count Lambsdorff. “It is important for us as Germans not to let the memories of our own war deeds fade into the background.” It was important to him to emphasize the motto “Never again war” once again.
Nazi comparison “completely absurd”
Lambsdorff rejected comments by Russian Parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who had compared the Ukrainian government to the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. “For the leadership of NATO countries, fascist ideology has become the norm,” Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel. 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.”
“If you stand here in Leningrad and see what the Nazis really did and at the same time know that a democratically elected Jewish president rules Ukraine, such comparisons are completely absurd,” said Count Lambsdorff ntv.
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.