Members of German civil society have written an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, condemning Russophobia in mass media and German political establishment while showing support for Moscow's actions in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis.
Retired German Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jochen Scholz wrote an open letter to the Russian leader in response to the speech Putin made on March 18, 2014 at the reunification of Crimea with Russia. The letter was cosigned by hundreds of Germans including lawyers, journalists, doctors, servicemen, scholars, scientists, diplomats and historians.
In that letter the German intellectuals said that Putin’s speech “appealed directly to the German people” and deserved a “positive response that corresponds to the true feelings of Germans.”
The letter acknowledges that the Soviet Union indeed played a decisive role in the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany and supported the reunification of Germany and its ascension into NATO after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.
Then US President George Bush Sr. had given assurances to Russia that NATO will not expand eastward, and yet despite Moscow's show of trust, the US and its allies violated that commitment, Scholz says.
“NATO expansion into the former Soviet republics, the creation of military bases in the former Warsaw Pact countries and the setup of an umbrella missile defense system in Eastern Europe, while unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM Treaty by the US is a flagrant violation of promises,” the letter reads.
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