Ok, now we understand why German leaders wanted to avoid Vday in Moscow at all costs – to avoid headlines like this.
But still, good for Steinmeier that he bit the bullet, and showed up anyway, headlines be damned.
It shows that perhaps Berlin is seriously interested in at least some way keeping the peace with Russia.
Must have been a bit of an awkward presser afterwards, – hope there weren’t too many questions from the press pool, you know, about Berlin financing Nazi wingnuts to terrorize civilians in East Ukraine.
Another day, another dollar, in the life of the foreign minister of a large European country which has abdicated its national, sovereign interests, not to mention its common sense, to an overseas power.
The Russian news agency TASS was on the scene with the story.
“Dear residents of Volgograd, this city was a site of warring and today it is a place of reconciliation and the music you are playing is a symbol of reconciliation,” he said.
“Volgograd is a hero city, and who were the heroes?” Steinmeier said. “They were the people who had gone through indescribable sufferings mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, civilian population and soldiers.”
“These people made the first decisive pivot in that war and they started liberation of the entire Europe from Nazi enslavement here in Stalingrad,” he went on. “For this, they made unfathomable sacrifices.”
“I’m bowing to these sacrifices and doing so mournfully,” Steinmeier said. “I bring my apologies on behalf of Germany for all the immeasurable sufferings that the Germans brought here to this city, to the whole of Russia, and to all the parts of the former Soviet Union that belong to Ukraine and Belarus today, and to the entire European continent.”