Germany‘s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has slammed Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the Ukraine invasion, accusing him of causing ‘immeasurable suffering, destruction, and death.’
According to local media report, Presidentt Frank-Waltermade the statement during a solemn memorial speech to mark the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis in Poland.
Steinmeier said the lessons of his own country’s aggression throughout Europe during the WWII hold a lesson as Russia’s attack on Ukraine has ‘destroyed the foundations of our European security order’.
‘You in Poland, you in Israel, you know from your history that freedom and independence must be fought for and defended. You know how important it is for a democracy to defend itself,’ the German President said as he stood alongside presidents Isaac Herzog of Israel and Andrzej Duda of Poland.
‘But we Germans have also learned the lessons of our history. ”Never again” means that there must be no criminal war of aggression like Russia’s against Ukraine in Europe.’
Steinmeier’s words honoured the hundreds of young Jews wasting away in Warsaw’s ghettos who took up arms in 1943 to fight back against the overwhelming might of the Nazi German army.
But they also highlighted the irony of Putin’s declaration that he had sent his forces to invade Ukraine in the name of ‘denazification’.
