Weird Flex But OK: Germany Tells Russia ‘We’re Kinda Experts on Nazism’ in Bizarre Twitter Spat

TOPSHOT - German Chancellor Angela Merkel walks in front of the main railway entrance to B
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images
Peter Caddle

Germany’s embassy in South Africa has claimed Germans are “experts on Nazism” after a strange online spat with Russia’s embassy in the same country.

Russia’s embassy in South Africa found itself under fire on social media on Saturday morning after it claimed it had received “a great number of letters of solidarity from South Africans” for “fighting Nazism in Ukraine”, with the German embassy in the country publicly deriding this characterisation of the conflict.

The spat quickly took a bizarre turn, however, when the Germans issued a strange boast to be “kinda experts” on Nazism.

Replying to the Russian post thanking Moscow’s supposed South African supporters, the German embassy emphasised this expertise in order to buttress their assertion that what Russian forces are doing — “slaughtering children, women and men” — is “definitely not ‘fighting Nazism’.”

“Sadly, we’re kinda experts on Nazism,” said the Germans, in reference to the fact that it was their country which elevated Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to power.

Russia’s British embassy was quick to fire back at the Germans, however, asking why if, they were experts on Nazism and mass killings, they did not speak out against killings allegedly perpetrated against civilians in the Donbas by Ukrainian forces since 2014.

“Sadly, Germany was silent all these 8 years. Where were you, experts?” the Russians asked in response to Germany’s claim of expertise.

“What you really should be sorry for, is for failing to persuade Ukraine to implement Minsk Agreements and sit down for negotiations with Donetsk and Lugansk,” they went on to say, sharing a post which claimed that “Ukraine’s authorities and representatives of militarized formations have been exterminating [the] civilian population” in the contested regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

While groups such as Human Rights Watch have reported apparent attacks on residential areas in separatist-controlled territory by Ukrainian forces — and vice versa — the Russians’ characterisation of what has been happening in Donbas since 2014 is generally not accepted by mainstream media in the West.

The notion that Russia is fighting Nazis with their war against Ukraine has been a central casus belli for President Vladimir Putin since his invasion began.

Announcing the launch of what he called a “special military operation” in the country, Putin said his goals were to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine.

“Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine,” Putin claimed.

The Ukrainian state does have some Nazi connections, integrating neo-Nazi paramilitary group the Azov Batallion into its National Guard in the wake of the Euromaidan uprising, for example — but Putin’s characterisation of the country as being under general Nazi control elides certain key facts — chief among then the fact that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish, and so is his prime minister.

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