MANIPULATION: Ukrainians beat two Berlin residents for speaking in russian

An article by the German media Junge Welt circulated online about a group of Ukrainians reportedly beating two russians in Berlin for speaking russian.

However, this is manipulation because a police spokesman told Junge Welt that no suspects were identified in the attack.

According to the article, russians were waiting for a taxi outside a restaurant in Berlin when a group of Ukrainians approached them. After the russians started speaking their native language, the Ukrainians did not like it and attacked them.

A police spokesman told Junge Welt that the attackers’ identities had not yet been established. In addition, one of the injured russian women said the police informed her that this was not the first time Ukrainian nationalists had attacked russian-speaking residents. However, we did not find confirmation of the episode in other media, and there was no news about this attack on the official website of the Berlin police. 

Junge Welt is a daily German newspaper propagating Marxist ideas. Back in 2014, a subsidiary agency of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior identified the Junge Welt as a left-wing extremist publication. The media outlet supports traditional communist ideas and justifies the regime of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SUP) that existed during the time of the German Democratic Republic in the second half of the 20th century.

We have noticed that Junge Welt’s latest pieces contain narratives similar to the russian disinformation campaign, e.g., an article about “neo-Nazis” from the Azov regiment, who allegedly planned riots in Italy. Consonant with russian propaganda, Junge Welt also promotes the narrative that russia “evacuates” people from the temporarily occupied territories calling Ukrainian claims about forced deportations “groundless.”