Germany denies Johnson’s Ukraine claim
THE German government has rejected former prime minister Boris Johnson’s claim that Berlin initially wanted Ukraine to quickly “fold”, following Russia’s invasion in February.
CNN Portugal quoted Mr Johnson as saying on Monday that “the German view was at one stage that if it were going to happen, which would be a disaster, then it would be better for the whole thing to be over quickly, and for Ukraine to fold”.
The television network reported that Mr Johnson claimed Germany had “all sorts of sound economic reasons” for that stance.
Steffen Hebestreit, a German government spokesman, said yesterday that he was “tempted to switch to English and say it’s ‘utter nonsense’, what Boris Johnson said”.
He added: “We know that the very entertaining former prime minister always has his own relationship with the truth,” and cited Chancellor Olaf
Scholz’s strong defence of Ukraine in a speech to the German parliament on February 27, three days after the war started.
“As such, I think the facts speak against the insinuation I heard in this interview,” Mr Hebestreit said.
The Pope has linked the suffering of present-day Ukrainians to the 1930s “genocide artificially caused by Stalin”, when the Soviet leader was blamed for creating a famine believed to have killed more than three million people.
The linking of the plight of Ukrainian civilians now to those killed by starvation 90 years ago by Pope Francis, and his willingness to call it a “genocide” and squarely blame Josef Stalin, marked a sharp escalation in the Vatican’s rhetoric against Russia.
As of this year, only 17 countries have officially recognised Ukraine’s notorious famine, known as the Holodomor, according to the Holodomor Museum in Kyiv.
In comments at the end of his weekly general audience yesterday, Pope Francis recalled that Saturday marks the 90th anniversary of the start of the famine. He said: “Saturday begins the anniversary of the terrible genocide of the Holodomor, the extermination by starvation artificially caused by Stalin between 1932 and 1933.
“Let us pray for the victims of this genocide and let us pray for so many Ukrainians – children, women, elderly, babies – who today are suffering the martyrdom of aggression.”