On February 15, the much discussed "crisis meeting" between the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Russian President Vladimir Putin took place. This meeting was mainly about the current situation around Ukraine, where the increased contradictions between the imperialists are very clear.
Both Ukraine and NATO as well as Russia have moved troops to the border with their respective rivals in recent weeks. Even though the media are still talking about a "threatening danger of war in Ukraine", the meeting between Scholz and Putin indicated a temporary easing of the conflict. Both emphasized the importance of diplomacy and dialogue, and both Scholz and Putin clearly stated that they do not want war in Ukraine.
However, the contradictions between the imperialists remain, of course, and do not simply disappear. Accordingly, both heads of state said that despite good dialogue, there are still major differences, which, however, they would like to resolve diplomatically rather than militarily. But since these contradictions cannot be completely solved by the imperialists, it is only a matter of time before the military solution is back on the agenda.
Moreover, both Putin and Scholz engaged in a little repartee at the press conference. In a psuedodramatic speech, Scholz said that for his generation a war in Europe had become unthinkable and that as heads of state and government it was their "damned duty" to prevent a warlike escalation in Europe.
Putin replied, however, that we had all witnessed the war in Yugoslavia initiated by NATO and that this had been a war in Europe, to which Scholz replied that there was a different situation in Yugoslavia at the time and that there was a danger of genocide, which had to be prevented.
22 years after the bombing of Belgrade, the representatives of the German bourgeoisie are still not too shy to justify their criminal and illegal war. And this after it has been proven for a long time that numerous reports of the Western media about massacres and concentration camps of the Yugoslav government were fake.
It is clear, in this war all involved forces have committed crimes against the peoples. But NATO's actions did not help to stop the genocides, on the contrary.
The "Kosovo Liberation Army" or "UCK" for short, which was closely linked to organized crime and carried out ethnic cleansing of Serbs, was supported and portrayed in the news as "freedom fighters".
In the bombing of Belgrade, between 489 and 582 civilians were killed by NATO bombs, according to the civic NGO Human Rights Watch.
It seems that the self-proclaimed "human rights defenders" of NATO countries, while talking about preventing a genocide, have themselves carried one out.
And still today. The imperialists show no remorse for their crimes.
They all the time try to morally legitimize their actions and present themselves as "the good guys". Even though it is absolutely obvious that the blood of thousands of innocent people is on their hands.
We can all see every day in the media how the German bourgeoisie portrays their competitors abroad as "human rights violators" and "aggressive warmongers".
But they themselves are not the innocent humanitarians they portray themselves as.
As the Yugoslav war and numerous other examples have shown, they themselves are often the ones violating so-called "human rights" or exercising military aggression against their competitors.
Putin's reaction to Scholz's statement was to speak of what is happening today in the Donbass as genocide, thus trying to legitimize his own policy and to present Russian imperialism as the "good" imperialism that wants to prevent genocide. Just like NATO did during the war in Yugoslavia.
It is true that the NATO and EU countries, above all the USA, are currently engaged in an unbelievable war-mongering. But one must not be carried away to feel sympathy with Russian imperialism now. Russian imperialism sees itself threatened by NATO's policy of encirclement, but when the balance of power is different, it is happy to become the aggressor itself.
The imperialists are never on our side. They all serve only themselves in the end. Their own profits, their own power, that is what matters to them. The ordinary working people must not put their hopes in them.
