Several pro-Russian rallies were held this weekend in Germany at the initiative of the country’s large Russian-speaking community, which sees itself as a victim of discrimination since the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

About 600 people, waving waves of Russia’s tricolor flag, gathered in downtown Frankfurt on Sunday under the slogan “against hate and harassment”, notes AFP. Because many people gathered at the same time in Hanover, in the north of the country, at the call of members of the Russian-speaking community, local police told AFP. The day before, a similar demonstration had been held in Lübeck, in northern Germany, with 150 participants, according to police, as well as in Stuttgart.

In Frankfurt, protesters were first near the city’s banking district, facing a pro-Ukrainian counter-demonstration of about 100 people, the two camps separated by a large police line.

The pro-Russian demonstrations set out to reach, according to organizers, the city’s main cemetery and lay flowers there on the graves of Soviet soldiers who died during the Second World War. At the head of the procession one could read on the banner: “Truth and Diversity of Opinions Than Propaganda”.

In Hanover, where pro-guile protesters organized a convoy of cars, under intense police surveillance, a counter-demonstration gathered 3,500 people under the slogan “Support Ukraine! »according to the police.

The day before, in Lübeck the police finally stopped a similar convoy of about sixty vehicles because “lawlessness”specifically “display of support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and use of forbidden symbols”local police said.

German authorities fear that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will be imported into German territory.

Germany has 1.2 million people originating, themselves or their families, from Russia, and 325,000 from Ukraine, which must add up to the arrival of more than 316,000 Ukrainian refugees over the past month.

Proliferation of denounced demonstrations « russophobia » who would win Germany had sparked a lively debate in the country, as the authorities saw in it the dangers of instrumentalization in the interests of the thesis defended by Moscow in this war. Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the police have recorded 383 anti-Russian crimes and 181 anti-Ukrainian crimes.