By Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) – The German government on Wednesday warned against Russian efforts to “instrumentalise” events marking the 80th anniversary of World War Two after the Russian ambassador to Berlin attended a local event in the eastern town of Seelow.
The commemoration marked the Battle of the Seelow Heights, one of the final battles in the war before the Soviet army’s march on Berlin and Germany’s capitulation in May 1945. At least 30,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in one of the hardest fought battles for Russia’s troops.
Russian ambassador Sergey Nechayev laid a flower at the monument to the battle. Military attaches from the embassies of Belarus and Kazakhstan, whose nationals fought in the Soviet army, also laid flowers at the site in Seelow.
Earlier this year, Germany’s Foreign Office issued guidance to be cautious of Russian attempts to use 80th anniversary events for propaganda purposes.
It recommended municipalities to make use of their “host rights” not to invite Russian state representatives to commemorations.
“We can expect the Russian side to instrumentalise it to justify the attack on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the ministry told a regular news conference on Wednesday. “That’s why the Foreign Office made a recommendation of that nature.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin initially portrayed his invasion of Ukraine as needed to deal with “Nazis”, seeking to use the legacy of World War Two to justify the attack.
“It’s inappropriate for a representative of a criminal regime that is attacking my country with missiles, bombs and drones every day to be present at a commemoration of war victims,” Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksii Makeiev told Welt TV.
The Soviet Union lost more than 25 million lives in what it calls the Great Patriotic War and Moscow marks the victory with a massive annual military parade in Red Square.
Russia’s state RIA news agency cited Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on Wednesday that German Foreign Ministry guidance suggesting representatives of Russia and Belarus could be expelled from anniversary events as an insult by forces she called “the ideological heirs and direct descendants of Hitler’s executioners”.
The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Russian domestic TV was present at the commemoration, which was otherwise attended by a small crowd of locals.
Deputy administrator of the Maerkisch-Oderland district, Friedrich Hanke, told broadcaster RBB in advance that it would be “absurd” to stop the ambassador from commemorating his compatriots.
“We will treat him with the appropriate respect,” he said.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt, additional reporting by Andreas Rinke and Andrew Osborn; editing by Matthias Williams and Sharon Singleton)
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