Number of hate crimes against Russians spiked due to the conflict in Ukraine, police say
© Getty Images / Alexander Koerner
Russian speakers in Germany are assaulted on a daily basis as hate crimes against people of Russian and Ukrainian origin have spiked in the country, reaching a staggering 200 cases every week, according to Germany’s police chief.
“There are criminal offenses against members of our society of Russian origin as well as against members of Ukrainian origin. We are currently counting a good 200 such crimes a week, the majority of which are anti-Russian,” Holger Münch, the president of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, said.
“We will continue to experience new highs in the area of politically motivated crime in the face of new social challenges,” the police chief concluded, in the same interview with German newspaper RND.
Since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, there have been numerous reports of hate crimes against Russians all across Europe. The offenses vary from insults and threats to physical assaults. Russian-owned businesses are being vandalized and destroyed.
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Previously, international human-rights group Save the Children has called out the bullying of Russian kids in Denmark. The activists say Russian kids get abused at school and online due to their ethnic origin.
Moscow attacked its neighbor in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two regions by force.
The US and most EU countries have responded to Moscow’s military action with severe backlash and sanctions. EU leaders have accused Russia of “an unprovoked and unjustified military invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine.”
