Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Secretary of State for Justice Friedrich Straetmanns (left) triggered outrage with a verbal attack on the Ambassador of Ukraine in Germany, Andriy Melnyk, and revived the debate about the state government’s behavior towards Russia. “You are a bad to disgusting ambassador!” It said in the now-deleted tweet.
The state secretary was reacting to a message from the ambassador, in which he described Düsseldorf’s ex-mayor Thomas Geisel as a “God-poor Putin admirer”. The ex-OB was accused of having relativized the war crimes in the Ukrainian Bucha with a blog post. This post has since been deleted.
Straetmanns, who sat for the left in the German Bundestag from 2017 to 2021 and was appointed State Secretary in the Schwerin Ministry of Justice at the end of 2021, apologized on Tuesday. “The wording of the tweet was wrong and inappropriate and that’s why I deleted it,” said the lawyer.
The CDU member of parliament Sebastian Ehlers called on Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) to dismiss the Straetmanns. Political moderation applies to civil servants. In the past, the Ukrainian ambassador Melnyk had repeatedly criticized the behavior of German politicians in dealing with Russia, including Schwesig. (dpa)
Source: Tagesspiegel
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