German president accused of staging Ukraine bomb shelter incident

Frank-Walter Steinmeier may have been used as a propaganda film actor, it’s been alleged

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier may have been part of a staged propaganda stunt, according to an article published by Der Spiegel on Monday. Columnist Thomas Fischer raised several questions about the politician’s recent visit to Ukraine, where he spent over an hour in a basement bomb shelter amid a supposed air raid by Russian forces.

On October 25, Steinmeier made his first trip to Ukraine since Russia launched its military offensive against the country in late February. While speaking to reporters in the northern town of Koryukovka near the Russian border, an air raid siren went off and the the president was escorted to a bomb shelter located in the basement of a nearby public building. Steinmeier ended up spending over an hour in the shelter with a group of officials and other people.

Following the incident, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said it was “a very good illustration why Ukraine needs more air defense systems” as soon as possible, referring to Berlin’s pledge to deliver several Iris-T systems to Kiev.

However, Fischer, a criminal defense attorney and German legal scholar who made a name for himself as a presiding judge in the Federal Court of Justice, argued that a number of details about the incident did not seem to make sense.

He noted that the president had previously been scheduled to visit on October 18, but this was canceled for “security reasons” amid Russian shelling. Fischer asked: “Has the security situation changed in the meantime?”

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Another detail noted by Fischer is the fact that Steinmeier was speaking to the media so close to a building with a fully furnished basement bunker, where chairs were seemingly already arranged in a circle, as if to allow camera crews to film the official sitting among civilians.

The columnist also questioned why there have been no reports from either Ukrainian or German media outlets or official sources about the supposed air raid which prompted Steinmeier to flee into this bunker, and why there has been no information about any Russian missiles actually hitting targets in the city.

Fischer points out that the German government could easily provide simple answers to the above questions, saying it was necessary to explain how and on whose behalf this incident may have been staged.

The columnist noted that, if it turns out the event was indeed a staged operation, it would end up being “extremely embarrassing” for Berlin, because the German president would have made himself “available as an actor in a propaganda film.”

Fischer is a well-known columnist in Germany, and his annual commentary on the penal code is considered the “bible of German Criminal Law,” according to the European Press Prize.