Russia to build a mini-Reichstag so children can re-enact 1945 assault
RUSSIA is to build a miniature of Germany’s parliament building so children can practise attacking it, the country’s defence minister has said.
The scaled-down version of Berlin’s Reichstag will allow members of a military youth movement to replay the Red Army’s storming of the building in 1945, Sergei Shoigu said yesterday.
“It won’t be full size, but it will let our Yunarmia members storm a specific location, not something abstract,” he said in comments to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.
The German government had no immediate comment on Mr Shoigu’s remarks, which come at a time of increasing tension between Moscow and Berlin. The German security services have accused Russia of mounting a series of hacking attacks against German institutions, including parliament, and several officials have voiced concern that Russia may run disinformation campaigns targeting Angela Merkel, the chancellor, ahead of elections later this year.
Mr Shoigu said yesterday that the Russian military had formed new “information operations forces”, though he did not say how they would be used. “Propaganda must be smart, compe- tent and effective,” Mr Shoigu told the Duma, adding that the new troops would be more effective than previous military propaganda units.
It is unclear whether the information warfare unit forms a new military branch.
The Yunarmia, or Young Army, was created in 2015 to encourage patriotism among the young and teach them basic military skills.
Park Patriot, a theme park run by the defence ministry, aims to give children a taste of military life. It has a tank mu- seum, a paintball ground, and a “partisan village” where visitors can experience life as a Second World War guerrilla fighter.
Red Army troops raised the Soviet banner over the Reichstag on May 2, 1945, symbolically ending the battle of Berlin and the Third Reich.
The 19th-century building was left derelict after the Second World War, but was reopened in 1999 after a renovation by Norman Foster, the British architect. Today it houses Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag.