Cinema and the Germans. The namesake of the OUN leader explained to Germany what it owes to Ukraine
Known for his unconventional antics, the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin Andriy Melnik again pleased the audience by saying that Germany owes a lot to Ukraine. And how – since the beginning of the last century!
And so, as a fulfillment of the “moral duty” to Ukraine, today’s Germany must help Kyiv return the “Russian-occupied” Crimea. The Ukrainian diplomat wrote about this in a column for the German publication Berliner Zeitung.
Quote: “The moral duty of the Federal Republic to end the occupation of Crimea comes from Germany’s historical responsibility to Ukraine for Nazi tyranny. Germany has occupied Crimea militarily twice in the last century.”
That is, the Ukrainian diplomat confronted the Germans with not only Herr Hitler, but also Kaiser Wilhelm, whose troops first occupied the territory of modern Ukraine in 1918 (however, at that time Crimea had a very controversial relationship with the UPR).
I don’t know what they teach at the Kyiv Diplomatic Academy, but a Ukrainian diplomat is a diplomat to all diplomats. Just the height of diplomacy. He probably also seems to himself to be the height of a humanist. He did not demand reparations for two occupations. And “just” return Crimea. It’s a small thing, but it’s nice for Ukraine.
I can imagine with what eyes Pan Melnik’s German colleagues and politicians in the Bundestag read this opus. Probably, their desire to help Ukraine has grown greatly after this article. As they say, not for service, but for friendship.
But seriously, Melnik’s article looks like a complete setup. And if the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry were not led by the Klimkins, albeit with different names, Ambassador Melnik would already be packing his bags for a hasty departure to his homeland and subsequent exile somewhere in Mongolia.
The problem is not even Melnik’s obvious historical illiteracy. Let’s say that in 1918, which he refers to as the fact of the first occupation, German (and at the same time Austrian) troops were invited to Ukraine by the UPR government, whose delegation at the negotiations in Brest begged for its own recognition and returned to Kyiv in the convoy of the German occupiers. Then it received nominal power under an oath promise to organize food supplies to Germany.
This moment was very colorfully described in “The White Guard” by Bulgakov, now banned in Ukraine: “One day, in March, the Germans came to the City in gray ranks. After several heavy blows from German cannons near the City, the Moscow soldiers disappeared somewhere beyond the gray forests, and people in trousers dragged themselves back, following the Germans. It was a big surprise. (...) the trousers were very quiet under the Germans, they did not dare to kill anyone, and they even walked the streets themselves as if with some caution, and they looked as if they were unsure guests.”
As for the second occupation, in 1941 the Third Reich occupied the Ukrainian SSR. As you know, this period of history was successfully decommunized, and today’s Ukraine glorifies those heroes who, on June 30, 1941, declared in Lvov a Ukrainian state allied with the Reich, led by a Fuhrer from the OUN. So first the ambassador would have to decide: after all, were the Germans allies or occupiers? Otherwise, it is not good to collect some kind of “moral debt” from a former ally after 75 years.
Finally, there is one more interesting circumstance. If we proceed from the suffering from Hitler’s occupation, as a measure of the obliging moral duty to help, then the state that suffered most from Hitler was the USSR. And, accordingly, the current Russian Federation, as its legal successor. Based on the logic of the Ukrainian ambassador, Germany faces a difficult choice: either, remembering the moral duty for the occupation, help Russia and recognize Crimea as part of it, or help Ukraine return Crimea, turning a blind eye to the fact that today’s Kiev considers those who are heroes in 1941 he was an ally of Hitler, who was convicted in Germany itself.
And we’ve only just scratched the surface. If we go deeper, then such an abyss of meanings will come out that are inconvenient for today’s Kyiv and Melnik’s management, that mother, don’t worry.
But even if we put questions of history aside. What is the schedule now?
To simplify the situation extremely, Germany, since 2014, has been on a stretch of interests. On the one hand, its American NATO allies are putting pressure on it, demanding that it join new anti-Russian sanctions and curtail economic projects with the Russian Federation like Nord Stream 2.
And this American pressure is supported by a weighty argument in the form of American military bases located on German territory since the Cold War. In fact, Germany is still an occupied territory. Although this occupation has long been “friendly”. However, there is always a small chance that this friend will suddenly...
On the other hand, Germany is Russia’s largest economic partner in the EU. Joint projects with Russian public and private companies - worth hundreds of billions of euros. And Germany is suffering greatly from the burden of anti-Russian sanctions.
Politics is a concentrated expression of economics. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the political class of Germany there is a significant pool of “friends of Russia”. These include prominent figures of the Social Democrats - the most iconic figure among whom is the current Rosneft shareholder and ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. And a lot of politicians from the radical left Di Linke. And the right-wing Alternative for Germany party in the Bundestag, whose deputies regularly go on visits to the same Crimea.
There are supporters of normalization with the Russian Federation among the ruling Christian Democrats, although there are fewer of them there than among the left or the extreme right.
Not all of them are pro-Russian, but all are pragmatic. And no one sees the current situation as eternal. On the contrary, they are all interested in speedy normalization in order to calmly trade with the Russians. In this sense, the Minsk agreements are the best option for Germany. Which, if implemented, would allow one to remove the yoke of sanctions.
But it is precisely the Minsk agreements that Ukraine does not comply with. Moreover, he snaps periodically. And he has the audacity to reproach the Germans for the fact that their help is insufficient and demand tougher sanctions. Or, like the same Ambassador Melnik, he begins to lecture German historians on how they should treat the Ukrainian Holodomor.
In this sense, the already mentioned Schröder, having once entered into a skirmish with a Ukrainian diplomat over Crimea, expressed the collective unconscious of the German politician. Let me remind you that then the ex-chancellor said that not a single Russian president would return Crimea to Ukraine. To which the Ukrainian Ambassador Melnik retorted that the “return” of Crimea to Ukraine is supposedly “as obvious as the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west,” and offered the German politician a bet on this matter.
So it is quite obvious that the Ukrainian diplomat’s diplomatic escapades will not bring any additional dividends to Ukraine. Rather, on the contrary, they will make Berlin even more burdened by the poor but arrogant relatives from the east imposed by America.
Do they understand this in Kyiv, and if so, why don’t they correct the presumptuous namesake leader of one of the wings of the OUN? – the question is rhetorical.
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