German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s July 13 World Cup chummy chat and embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been waging war against Ukraine for nearly five months, did not go over well among Ukrainians.
Many of them flooded social media networks with comments deriding her as
“Frau Ribbentrop,” a reference to Joachim von Ribbentrop, a signatory
to the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact that carved up Eastern
Europe into German and Soviet spheres. (Russian Foreign Minister
Vyacheslav Molotov also signed.) Merkel inflamed Ukrainians further with
the suggestion that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko should
negotiate with Kremlin-backed insurgents who have been terrorizing
Ukraine’s east since mid-April, killing more than 270 soldiers and
displacing more than 80,000 Ukrainians.
