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BERLIN — Critics have taken intention at Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey after Russian flags have been flown throughout the German capital in exhibits of assist for Moscow’s conflict in Ukraine, whereas police reportedly confiscated Ukrainian flags on Sunday.
Berlin’s police on Friday banned Russian and Ukrainian flags from being displayed at sure places on Could 8 and 9, the times commemorating the tip of World Conflict II in Europe.
Stefan Evers, the overall secretary of Berlin’s Christian Democrats (CDU), the principle political rivals to Giffey’s Social Democrats (SPD), on Monday shared an image of Russian flags on show regardless of the ban, calling it an “embarrassment for Berlin.”
“Ukrainian flags have been confiscated yesterday. Immediately Putin’s supporters fortunately wave the Russian flag on the Soviet Conflict Memorial in Treptower Park,” Evers wrote on Twitter.
Kyiv over the weekend reacted with anger to the ban on the Ukrainian flag.
“Berlin made a mistake by prohibiting Ukrainian symbols,” International Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated on Twitter on Sunday night, including it was “deeply false to deal with them equally with Russian symbols.”
“Taking a Ukrainian flag away from peaceable protestors is an assault on everybody who now defends Europe and Germany from Russian aggression with this flag in fingers,” he continued.
Giffey responded to the criticism on the weekend, emphasizing that the flag ban solely utilized at conflict memorial websites slightly than throughout the entire metropolis, however her clarification did little to defuse the scenario.
On Sunday, CDU lawmaker Roderich Kiesewetter, who was in Kyiv final week with get together chief Friedrich Merz, additionally criticized the Ukrainian flag ban.
“I discover it extremely alarming that on such a memorial day as immediately the Ukrainian flag is banned in Berlin,” Kiesewetter stated. “I feel it’s actually alarming that trigger and impact are reversed right here and we must always count on from a ruling mayor Giffey that she cancels such a call by the police.”
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