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When Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer recently traveled to Moscow with the Saxon AfD leader Jörg Urban, the federal government was irritated.

In his State of the Union address, Vladimir Putin had just threatened the West with asymmetrical war, concentrated troops on the Ukrainian border and dismantled the organization of his imprisoned opponent Alexei Navalny.

Tens of thousands took to the streets in Moscow against the impending judicial murder of Navalny.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that he was assuming that Kretschmer “will not allow himself to be instrumentalized” by Putin, which means the opposite in diplomatic speech.

And of course Kretschmer let himself be instrumentalized, begged for Sputnik vaccine and a phone call with the Kremlin boss, whom he invited to Dresden.

Of course, one has to ask Maas whether his left hand knows what the right is doing or vice versa.

Because Kretschmer had traveled to Moscow to open a German-Russian art exhibition that is funded by the Foreign Office (AA).

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The joint exhibition of the Tretyakov Gallery and the Dresden State Art Collections shows works by German and Russian painters of the Romantic period.

It is called "Dreams of Freedom".

From circles of the AA it is said that the subversive aesthetic message of freedom of romanticism should be promoted right now in Russia.

But if one speaks of instrumentalization, one should know what the Russian side is doing with the exhibition.

The director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Selfira Ismailowa Tregulowa, was an art functionary even during the Soviet era.

She is an enthusiastic supporter of Putin, has worked on the constitutional amendments that effectively guarantee Putin the presidency for life, and is a member of Putin's “Council for Culture and Art”.

It is hard to imagine that she thinks anything of “dreams of freedom” in the sense of Nawalny.

And so Tregulowa said in an interview with Hans-Georg Moek, the communications director of the Kulturstiftung der Länder, which also supports the exhibition: Romanticism combines “the awareness of powerful national identity” with “the attempt to pose and solve essential global questions ".

A good description of Putin's great power politics.

At that time, Russians and Germans recognized the national “essence” of art “in contrast to France”. That is what "today is unlikely to be current about the art of Romanticism in Russia and also in Germany." The former AfD wingman Urban will be happy to hear that. But Maas should ask himself why his office is funding a show that goes so well with Putinism.