Let's do some Putin bashing, shall we

The favorite sport of German media after the summer of soccer is Putin bashing.

Which is easy and makes you look good, after all you can show how important supporting the newly minted democracies in Eastern Europe is.

From a Russian perspective, you could sum up most of what has happened since the fall of the Iron Curtain in one sentence: no good deed goes unpunished.

Supported the unification of Germany and pulled out all troops, let much of the Soviet Union go and become their own countries, even areas that had been Russian for many centuries.

Of course, there is the bad stuff, several invasions, shutting down gas supply in winter, and too many shirtless romps.

But the Putin bashing propaganda of the past weeks, come on, FAZ and others. Are we not better than that?

The opinion piece in FAZ on 29 August under "Putinomes - when language becomes a weapon" is useless, and the title alone should prove it.
The formidable Russian propaganda machine turns out to be pretty quaint and underdeveloped, because simply calling opponents of the separatists "fascists"  does not cut it. Even though the German press largely stayed away from reporting on the Wolfsangel banner you can indeed find in Ukraine.

Towards the end of the opinion piece, there is a paragraph that starts with But in the West, too, in such situations, language is used in a way that does not reflect reality but merely an illusion of reality.

Apart from the fact that language creates reality, which you should know if you want to be taken seriously in a discussion of propaganda, the clincher comes in the parts after this nice lead-in. Because the West is criticized for:

Calling Russia a "democracy" sounds comforting. [...] Recommending Ukraine "decentralize" the country sounds federal and like a solution to prevent splitting up the country...

What sucks most about Germans commenting on territorial issues? I had expected they know better. It took two World Wars plus half a century for most German politicians to let go of old territorial claims. And even then, some still hang on.

The Russians, of course, are expected to resolve theirs without two world wars plus 50 years. Negotiations and a referendum that cannot be tampered with should do the trick.

Our Canadian friends at NATO who did the funny map "Russia" - "Not Russia" made me laugh.

But I'll laugh even more once the Canadian NATO mission does a map "Denmak" - "Not Denmark". You know, somewhere around Greenland.

The summer of double standards...