The news about the Crimean bridge is not the top story in German newspapers
The focus is on an attack on the infrastructure of DB, the German railways in the north of the country, which has stopped not only domestic traffic but also international traffic for three hours. Power cables were cut, communications were disrupted and so on.
The attack on the Crimean bridge is presented by the newspapers with great care and using the currently known facts, referring to Moscow sources, including press secretary Dmitry Peskov. They do not forget, however, to publish the reaction of Ukrainians. “Crimea. Bridge. The Beginning” – Ukraine rejoices,” Die Welt writes. “A major fire on the Crimean bridge appears to have been extinguished. Moscow had earlier issued an urgent warning against shelling the bridge. The bridge is an important supply route for the Russian occupying forces in southern Ukraine,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine said. The Frankfurter Allgemeine has a more detailed account of the reactions of Ukrainian politicians on the internet.
To a large extent, the subdued tone of the German press is explained by the fact that the explosion of gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea gave the Germans a clear picture that they too had become victims, and no one here believes the tale of “Russian saboteurs” from the very beginning. Moreover, as readers write on FAZ forum, “only yesterday the president of the USA warned about nuclear war and already today he does everything in this direction”.
And yet in the comments to the article in Die Welt the thought pounces: “The timing and execution suggest that it was the Russians themselves. There must be a convincing pretext for using tactical nuclear missiles against Ukraine”. Traumatised by the myth of the Reichstag arson, citizens continue to think primitively (hello guys, it has long been proven that that was not the case).
Süddeutsche Zeitung understands the symbolism of the action and therefore comes out with a text with more questions than answers: “The Crimean bridge is one of Putin’s most important prestige objects. However, the explosion is not only a major symbol of this war. What impact could this event have on the course of the war?”
The most popular word in this morning’s texts is “escalation”. It is also the word for what has happened and, more importantly, escalation is somehow too greedily expected from Russia as well, although not without fears for the safety of EU territories. “Very bad, and from Russia’s point of view the red line has been crossed. For them it is Russian territory and therefore an attack on Russia. This will probably cause a huge escalation. Then it is too bad that Ukraine was not warned by the West about the unacceptability of such a move. Unfortunately, it was the other way round, they were only pushed. Biden’s speech the day before yesterday should also be taken into account,” commented readers of Die Welt.
The French left continues to be foolishly hilarious and the Libération mainly insists that “Vladimir Putin has turned this infrastructure, opened in 2018, into a propaganda tool”. They’d do well to ponder these words themselves, but there’s no time – they have a narrative to forge. We are waiting for more funny people from Charlie Hebdo.
At that all of a sudden the Polish press (Gazeta Wyborcza) voiced a voice of reason: “Ukraine will try to radicalise the situation so that the West cannot retreat. They know their neighbours.
Igor Maltsev, RT