The Office of the Federal President has dismissed sharp criticism from the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany at the Federal President's commemoration to mark the 80th anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union as unfounded.
The Ukrainian ambassador Andrij Melnyk had reproached Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier that it was a regrettable and disconcerting affront for Ukrainians that he wanted to give his commemorative speech on the anniversary in the German-Russian Museum Berlin Karlshorst.
The museum, which is reminiscent of the German war of annihilation in the east, only bears Russia in its name, but not Ukraine or Belarus, which at that time would also have suffered greatly from the war unleashed by Germany.
Johannes Leithäuser
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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The Office of the Federal President stated that all ambassadors of the 15 successor states of the former Soviet Union had been invited to the Federal President's commemorative speech.
Melnyk's rejection, which he justified in a three-page letter, was regrettable and exaggerated.
It contradicts the intention that the Federal President wanted to promote with his speech: that the memory of the criminal attack could develop a binding effect today.
A year ago Steinmeier had intended to visit the exhibition in that museum, which was reminiscent of the German-Soviet war, with the three ambassadors from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
That then failed due to the restrictions of the corona pandemic;
but at that time Melnyk did not protest.
However, two months later, in May 2020, the Ukrainian ambassador canceled his participation in a commemoration organized by the Berlin Senate to commemorate the end of the war in Berlin, as he did not want to attend such a ceremony side by side with the Russian ambassador. Melnyk brought up this argument again now. In his letter he wrote that a joint commemoration with a Kremlin diplomat "is beyond my imagination".