Reckoning with demonstrators
Kuleba: “Every Ukrainian wants more peace”
03/12/2023, 03:00 am
Sahra Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer were able to mobilize around 13,000 people for their demonstration at the Brandenburg Gate at the end of February. They demand an end to arms deliveries to Ukraine and negotiations with Russia. The Ukrainian foreign minister considers the demands hypocritical.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has denied that the participants in the rally organized by left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht and women’s rights activist Alice Schwarzer in Berlin against arms deliveries to Ukraine have a sincere desire for peace. “I assure you that every single Ukrainian, even the soldier in the trenches who kills the Russian soldier who is attacking him at this moment, wants more peace than the most peaceful demonstrator at the Brandenburg Gate,” Kuleba told “Bild am Sonntag”.
“These people have to be honest,” he demanded in the newspaper. “Instead of advertising under the slogan ‘Stop the war by supplying arms’, they should write what they really mean: ‘Let the Russians kill, torture and rape Ukrainians’. Because if we don’t have weapons to defend ourselves, it will be accurate that happen.”
Furthermore, Kuleba demanded in the newspaper from Germany a speedy delivery of more ammunition. The shortage is the most urgent problem in the fight against Russian occupiers. “Germany could really help more with ammunition. With artillery ammunition,” said the minister.
According to police estimates, 13,000 people took part in the rally organized by Wagenknecht and Schwarzer to mark the anniversary of the Ukraine war at the end of February. An underlying petition, which has now been signed by over 700,000 people – including leading AfD politicians – called for an end to Western arms supplies to Ukraine and the start of negotiations with Russia.