The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, & German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have shown Ukraine their “complete support” on Monday as they paid a visit at Berlin’s symbolically important Brandenburg Gate, illuminated in Ukraine’s national colours.
Macron said, “Complete support for Ukraine” as he & Scholz approached, about 200 people gathered nearby.
Some were draped in Ukraine’s blue as well as yellow national colours &chanted “Mariupol”, a southeastern Ukrainian city destroyed by Russian strikes.
The Brandenburg Gate has formed a central part of the wall that separated east and west Berlin. It shows the Cold War’s “Iron Curtain” that has divided the entire world into capitalist & communist blocs.
Some Ukraine nationals in the crowd criticised the French and German governments for being too close with Russia, which had called full-scale military operation against Ukraine on February 24.
Meanwhile, a 40-year-old doctor ‘Tania’ who has lived in Germany for 25 years, “I would like to see more courage.”
While highlighting that Moscow could attack Poland or the Baltic states next, she said, “I completely understand they (Macron as well as Scholz) fear for their own citizens, but we must not underestimate Russia.”
“People in the West are fearing due to the soaring prices and the fear of third world war.”
Scholz, in specific, has come under fire for arms deliveries to Ukraine deemed insufficient and Germany’s reliance on Russian energy imports.
