FROM shop fronts spattered with paint to insults thrown in the street, attacks on the Russian community have spiked in Germany since the start of the war in Ukraine.

As a result, some have staged demonstrations “against Russophobia” in the form of vehicle convoys across the country, which has the largest Russian diaspora in the European Union.

But the demos have sparked a backlash, with many interpreting them as a show of support for Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

Christian Freier, 40, has been sent hundreds of death threats a day since helping to organise a 400-strong vehicle convoy in Berlin last weekend, along with images of burnt and mutilated corpses.

The website of his car repair shop was hacked and his online ratings have plummeted.

“My life is hell,” said Freier, who has both German and Russian citizenship.

The demonstration was largely apolitical and peaceful, though one woman was arrested for displaying the letter “Z”, a symbol of support for the Russian army and now banned in Berlin.

“My aim was to only protest against the daily aggression suffered by Russians in Germany,” said Freier, declining to answer any question about the conflict itself.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, 383 anti-Russian and 181 anti-Ukrainian crimes have been officially reported to German police.

Germany is home to 1.2 million Russians and 325,000 Ukrainians, plus more than 316,000 who have arrived as refugees since the start of the conflict.

‘Parade of shame’

“All war is awful and can never be justified,” said Rene Hermann, 50, who also helped to organise the Berlin convoy.

He said he has “no position” on the conflict, but away from the scrutiny of journalists, he runs a blog on social network Tiktok with thousands of subscribers.

His account was recently suspended after he repeatedly spread pro-Kremlin propaganda, including allegations that Kyiv staged a massacre “to manipulate Western thinking”.

“The motives for taking part in these demonstrations are very diverse,” said Jochen Toepfer, a sociologist at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg and an expert on Russian society.

“They are organised as demonstrations against discrimination in Germany. But there are certainly also fans of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, as well as people who do not necessarily like Putin but do not want to see their country discredited, despite the war.”

Though it was billed as apolitical, the Berlin demo provoked a wave of indignation in Germany, with the Bild daily calling it a “parade of shame”.

“For heaven’s sake, how could you allow this convoy of shame in the middle of Berlin?” Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk asked Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey.

Giffey said she understood his anger, but cannot penalise people for merely waving Russian flags.

Imported war?

The security authorities are “closely monitoring the extent to which Russian, but also Ukrainian, citizens are at risk in Germany,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser last week.

“We must be very careful that this war is not imported into our society.”

According to Tobias Rupprecht, a postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of Berlin, that is unlikely to happen.

“Most Russians here have a much more critical view of the conflict and tend to be much more westernised than Russians in Russia.”

However, “the longer the war goes on, the greater the risk that more crimes will be committed in this context in Germany”, said Toepfer.

Several more pro-Russian demonstrations have been planned in Germany for today, prompting condemnation from Russian organisations.

“We will not tolerate cases of discrimination being used as a cover for pro-Putin propaganda events,” warned the IDRH, a society for people of Russian origin in the state of Hesse. – AFP, April 10, 2022.