DRESDEN (dpa-AFX) – Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has urgently called for an end to the Ukraine war. “There is no justification for this war,” he said on Wednesday during a peace prayer service in the Frauenkirche in Dresden. No one – not even a Russian President – “can justify to history what is happening in Ukraine, that hundreds of thousands are fleeing, that innocent people are dying and that a country is being destroyed. That is why we appeal to the Russian President: stop this one war now.”
It doesn’t take courage to invade a smaller neighboring country. “But it takes courage to end this war. And that’s what we’re demanding now,” said the Federal President, who was accompanied by his wife Elke Bdenbender. Russia under President Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine last week.
The Dresden Frauenkirche stands for peace and reconciliation like no other place: “But we also know that while we are praying here in this church, listening to a peace concert, in the same hour there are air raids on Kharkiv, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities, people are dying in Ukraine.”
The church in Dresden, which was destroyed in World War II, was rebuilt with donations from all over the world and consecrated in 2005. Today it is a symbol of peace and reconciliation./jos/DP/men