Putin a Human Rights Hero?

As with many aspects of contemporary German political life, another reason for Berlin’s timorousness toward Moscow is in some part attributable to historic guilt from the Second World War, when Nazi forces committed heinous acts against Soviet citizens and starved millions of Soviet troops to death in Operation Barbarossa. It is this very sort of admirable, if at times misplaced, feeling of responsibility for the past, however, that doesn’t exist in Russian leaders of the Putin mold. “There’s a sense we should avoid conflict at any cost,” Rolf Fuecks, director of the Heinrich Boll Foundation, recently told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty about the attitude of the German political establishment toward Russia. The uproar over the Quadriga award, however, indicates that many Germans do not approve of the way in which their country’s foreign policy has been headed.