Russia has accused Germany of “Russophobic hysteria” on Wednesday as tensions between the two countries run high over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement marking the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Berlin of jeopardizing the two countries’ ties that were rebuilt in the decades following World War II.
“The German authorities have recently been taking more and more actions that threaten to undermine the process of historical reconciliation between Russians and Germans after the Great Patriotic War,” the ministry statement said, using the Russian term for World War II.
The ministry also accused Germany of carrying out a propaganda campaign aimed at fomenting “unmotivated aggression bordering on mass psychosis” toward Russia.
“Russophobic hysteria is systematically fueled by almost daily public attacks against our country by members of the German government,” the statement continued.
Already tense over the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, relations between Berlin and Moscow have continued to sour since the Kremlin sent troops into pro-Western Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Since the invasion began, Germany has moved to shed the caution it has maintained since the end of World War II, sending lethal weaponry to Kyiv and imposing sanctions on Russia.
Berlin also abandoned Nord Stream 2, a controversial Baltic Sea gas pipeline running between Russia and Germany, following the start of the invasion.
Last week German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, alongside Frence President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, met with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky in Kyiv, in a historic trip that saw the leaders visit towns devastated by the ongoing war.
Moscow has repeatedly attempted to draw parallels between the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany and its current military campaign in Ukraine, which the Kremlin says is an effort to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine.
It has also expressed fury at Western countries for supplying weapons and other military aid to Kyiv.
“News footage with German weapons and army equipment supplied to the Kyiv regime as part of the special military operation in Ukraine is extremely negatively perceived, according to officials in Berlin who claim ‘victory over Moscow on the battlefield’,” the Foreign Ministry’s latest statement wrote.