The recent five-day visit of German politicians to Crimea convinced them that the picture shown in European news about life on the “occupied” peninsula does not correspond to reality, writes Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
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“Personally, I wanted to see everything with my own eyes and communicate with ordinary people - taxi drivers, bus drivers, waiters. I did this, and none of them told us that they were dissatisfied with the fact that Crimea became Russian,” said Berlin Bundestag member Harald Laatsch, whose opinion is cited in the publication.
The publication notes that on the streets of Crimean cities, guests did not see any signs of occupation, and the messages transmitted by European media about food shortages and queues turned out to be a myth.
In turn, the head of the national-cultural association of Crimean Germans, Yuri Hempel, who is accompanying his German colleagues on the trip, said that in the current conditions, public diplomacy has shown its effectiveness.
“Largely thanks to public diplomacy, the information blockade around Crimea has been broken. Public opinion polls conducted in Germany show that understanding and support for Russia's position is growing among the population. And today it already reaches 40 percent,” Hempel emphasized.