In his brief conversation with me, Westerwelle indicated that he has joined the ranks of the Putin understanders. “No other country had more victims in World War II than the Russians,” he said when I asked what made comparisons between Putin and Hitler verboten. This is an accurate historical point. But with Russia gobbling up an entire region of Ukraine and threatening to annex even more, how is reminding people of the Soviet Union’s 70-year-old victimhood at the hands of the Nazis—while completely ignoring its own, subsequent subjugation of Central and Eastern Europe, not to mention Stalin’s depredations against his own people—in any way relevant?
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