Oleksiy Makeyev, Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany, wrote on the social network X that the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, which he calls the “Berliner Volksrepublik Zeitung” (translation: “Newspaper of the Berlin People’s Republic”), regularly tags him in articles “distorting the reality and the truth about the Russian war of aggression” against Ukraine. “Is the Berliner Zeitung a new Radio Moscow?” Makeyev asks.
The Ukrainian diplomat harshly criticized the German media outlet, among other things, for hiring former Russian state media employees who, in his opinion, “given their past work, can hardly be considered journalists.”
According to the ambassador, after the EU banned the Kremlin-funded Russia Today channel, its former anchor and Putin biographer, Thomas Fassbender, joined this newspaper’s geopolitics section and now promotes the concept that there is “no alternative to Putin in Russia.”
“My recommendation regarding the Berliner Zeitung is just don’t read it and don’t give them an interview,” he concluded.
About the Berliner Zeitung newspaper
Since 2019, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper and the Berliner Verlag publishing house have been owned by a married couple of entrepreneurs, Holger and Silke Friedrich. In 2023, Holger Friedrich signed the “Manifesto for Peace”, which was presented by then Left Party politician and now leader of his own party, Sahra Wagenknecht, known for pro-Russian statements, and women’s rights activist Alice Schwarzer.
This petition, whose authors called, among other things, to refuse further arms supplies to Ukraine and to intensify efforts for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, has received over 910,300 signatures in more than a year. The German media criticized this petition as expressing “disdain for Ukrainians.”
An alternative petition calling not to stop aid to Ukraine, including through arms supplies, launched on February 24, 2023 by the leaders of the youth organizations of the Free Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union, Franziska Brandmann and Johannes Winkel, received more than 166,500 signatures by April 2024.
