A few days ago, “Moscow” signs disappeared from the streets of Düsseldorf, recalling the German city’s friendship with the Russian capital. We decided to find out how things are going with partners from Russian cities in Germany as a whole. Here are the answers that came from Berlin, Stuttgart and Baden-Baden.

“The partnership between the cities is suspended. There are no contacts and events”, – said the representative of the Berlin Senate Kai-Uwe Merz (Dr. Kai-Uwe Merz).

Calm after 30 years of partnership also reigns between Stuttgart and Samara. The press secretary of the German city administration, Jana Steinbeck, responded to a request from DW as follows: Anniversaries of the partnership have been cancelled. Currently, there is no place for vacations and they make no sense. But this is not the end of our partnership. We look forward to renewing ties with Samara after the end of the war.”

Baden-Baden has also so far refused contacts with Sochi

The 30th anniversary of Stuttgart’s friendship with Samara isn’t the only holiday that won’t happen due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The official partnership between Baden-Baden and Sochi also completes 10 years. DW reached out to former Baden-Baden mayor Kurt Liebenstein for comment. He held this position from 1994 to 2009, being responsible, in particular, for international cooperation. Kurt Liebenstein was one of the initiators of the partnership between Baden-Baden and Sochi. Today, Kurt Liebenstein is vice president of the Society for Partnerships and is directly responsible for the friendship with Sochi. The partnership was frozen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The partnership between Sochi and Baden-Baden is already 10 years old. It has historical antecedents. After the marriage of Tsar Alexander I, Napoleon’s opponent, to the Princess of Baden, relations, first of all, between famous people from Russia and Baden -Baden in the 19th century were very close. They are reflected in the monuments to Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gogol, Zhukovsky… Yeltsin called Baden-Baden the most Russian cultural capital in Europe, – notes Kurt Liebenstein. – In the beginning In the 2000s, Six major German-Russian forums were held here, which were supposed to contribute to the development of close ties between Germany and Russia, whose objective was the peace and well-being of the peoples of Europe. Among the participants were Yevgeny Primakov and Wolfgang Ischinger (Wolfgang Ischinger) The fratricidal war against Ukraine has destroyed these hopes. Unfortunately, the Russian people, blinded by false propaganda, clearly do not realize what the Russian leadership has done – for their country and for Europe. people’s lives in Russia and Europe deteriorating, cultural ties are being destroyed. And friends become enemies again.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Partnership Society passed a resolution to freeze the partnership with Sochi (the partnership with Yalta was frozen in 2014. – Ed.). Kurt Liebenstein quotes the following lines from the Society for Partnerships resolution on the war between Russia and Ukraine: “Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine is contrary to the goals set by the Society, international law and the European legal order.” The Society’s resolution also emphasizes that people suffer in wars, and it is to them that the Society’s sympathy is directed.