Opinion
Commentary: injustice in the name of the Kremlin
The verdict against Nadezhda Savchenko, who poisoned Russia’s ties to Ukraine even more. Propaganda needs enemies. This is also why Ukrainians are in the sights of Russian justice, writes Bernd Johann.
“The war has not a female face.” The white Russian literature Nobel prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich wrote. With portraits, you put women who fought during the Second world war in the ranks of the Red army, in the year 1983 in a book, a grandiose monument. These women defended bravely for your homeland against the German Nazis. As heroines, most of them saw themselves at the time.
Also the war in Eastern Ukraine has a female face. And for the Ukrainians, there is a heroine: Nadia Savchenko, the defending 2014 their homeland against Russian Aggression. The Russian state holds a military pilot for a murderer. A court in southern Russia has Savchenko now, therefore, in international solid process criticized sentenced to a draconian penalty of 22 years.
A shabby show trial
It is a wrong judgment, even if it relies on Russian law and of the law. The guilty verdict of a judge, formulated in the Russian province. But he carries the political handwriting of the leadership in Moscow. The procedure was a shabby show trial.
The accused was presented as public enemy literally. Russian media and politicians operated agitation. The unexplained circumstances of her arrest to throw alone questions. Also arguments of the defense against the contradictory evidence of the prosecution remained before the court not taken into account. Savchenko was always under pressure, even as it came to your personal closing argument.
Justice in the service of Propaganda
Bernd Johann heads the Ukrainian editorial office of DW
The judgment is now to demonstrate strength. It is intended to intimidate. But above all, it is subordinated to the logic of the Propaganda. The Kremlin needed this judgment. After two years, it should prove finally, what hammered since the start of the war, the people Of Ukrainians a threat to Russia.
Savchenko fits exactly in this travesty of Propaganda. As a member of a volunteer of the Ukrainian fighting Association you should be for the death of two journalists from Russia partly responsible. “Hatred and hostility” would have driven Savchenko, when she showed the target coordinates to the Ukrainian army-wide, the opened fire, as the judge presents it.
And he is entirely on line. Still the Russian propaganda machine of Vladimir Putin is doing so at the top, as if only Ukrainians war in the Donbass. Here, the use of Russian soldiers and weapons found in Eastern Ukraine for a long time. Without this participation there would have been probably never to the war. 9000 people have died according to UN figures. The two Russian journalists are, unfortunately.
Russia needs enemies and produced heroes
Savchenko is not the only Ukrainian, the Russian state takes it. Last year, the Ukrainian film Director Oleg Sentsov was sentenced to a comrade-in-arms to 20 years in prison. Against around two dozen Ukrainians currently in Russia, similar procedures are to be in the Gang, said in Kiev.
People are victims of Propaganda. The Kremlin needs a culprit, so that the citizens ask for it, why your country still leads the war against the Ukraine. The arbitrariness infamous justice is a tool. Russian opposition politician were always in your sights. Now Ukrainians back in the foreground.
Russia is not poisoned, only the relationship to the Ukraine. It poisons the relationships between people. And it also creates new heroes. Nadezhda Savchenko, who is the female face.