Understanding events in Ukraine can be complicated even for Ukrainians, let alone Germans.
So former German member of parliament Marieluise Beck, a politician for more than 30 years, has decided to make it her mission to educate Germans about Eastern Europe in general, and Ukraine in particular.
Some of the topics include complex chapters in Ukrainian and German history, Russian propaganda, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that bypasses Ukraine, and Russia’s takeover of the Crimea peninsula in 2014.
“Many (Germans) don’t know much about Ukraine,” Beck said.
Instead, she said, some Germans still see Russia as their nation’s “strong partner.”
Beck was speaking in Kyiv during the presentation of her new Center for Liberal Modernity think tank at the International Renaissance Foundation on June 6.
After Beck left the Bundestag in 2017, where she served as a member of parliament from the Alliance ’90/The Greens group, she co-founded the nongovernmental organization with her husband and former German politician Ralf Fücks. The Berlin-based group is called the Zentrum Liberale Moderne, or LibMod.
The organization has a strong agenda of opposing Kremlin’s aggressive and anti-democratic policies. The group has launched a German-language website, called Understanding Ukraine, where it publishes stories and expert opinions on Ukraine.
“We need a platform where people in Germany get information that is not propaganda,” she said, especially to counter Russian propaganda that has infiltrated Germany.
Beck hopes to have the platform translated into Ukrainian and Russian “to build a bridge” among people who favor democracy.
Apart from that, the group holds roundtables and other events. The first conference in March was dedicated to the Kremlin’s influence on Europe.
Ukraine has a lot at stake in winning over German public opinion to its side.
Germany, with 83 million people, is Europe’s most powerful economy. Politically, Chancellor Angela Merkel has played a key role in trying to bring an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014, and in urging Ukraine to combat corruption and speed up its transition to a democratic and free-market society.
Beck has been one of Ukraine’s best friends in the process, doling out support but also criticism as she sees fit.
She hosted a well-received lecture last year by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in the German Bundestag on June 20, 2017. Snyder spoke on Germany’s historical responsibility towards Ukraine. At the time, Beck was a member of German Green party’s parliamentary faction.
Beck also cooperated with International Renaissance Foundation to screen a movie about filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, now a political prisoner in Russia for his opposition to Russia’s invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
The movie about Sentsov also tells the story of Crimean Tatars. “Nobody knows they were deported by (Josef) Stalin,” Beck said, referring to the forced deportations of Crimean Tatars from the peninsula in 1944.
Tamila Tasheva, a co-founder and coordinator of public organization Crimea SOS, visited several screenings of movie “Process” in Germany. It’s often followed by a discussion about the Crimean people’s history.
But Tasheva said raising awareness about Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was a difficult task. She said that locals would come just to see the movie, and their knowledge about Ukrainian political prisoners is very limited.
“The world is tired of Ukraine,” Tasheva said. Local media rarely feature anything about Ukrainian political prisoners. In one screening, pro-Kremlin TV channel RT paid a visit, asking provocative questions, Tasheva recalled.
The effect of Russian propaganda has been to confuse and distract the German public, leaving them with little information about the Ukrainians held as political prisoners by Russia, according to Tasheva.
“Because of the pressure of propaganda, they miss it, and when we begin to talk about it, it is a discovery for them,” she said. “It is clear that we need, and it’s important, to work with the local German audience.”
