Article: Putin's German aides
Mariupol was completely destroyed by Russia. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and displaced. Reconstruction plays a central role in the Russian propaganda war. According to Monitor research, German companies are also involved.
It was one of the most terrible battles of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For weeks, Russian troops besieged Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, starving the population and sparing neither the patients in hospitals nor civilians hiding in the theater. Many survivors were driven out by Vladimir Putin's army. A large city was completely ruined.
When the Russian flag was raised on the destroyed buildings of Mariupol, construction work on the "new" Mariupol began. A Russian city, with Russian residents, built on behalf of the Kremlin. There are construction sites all over the city, blocks of flats built out of the ground.
This is so important for Russian propaganda that even Putin personally got an impression of the progress of the work last year. "We will rebuild the apartments, schools, hospitals, theaters and museums," Putin said of Mariupol. Everything that he previously had brutally destroyed.
But who will help him with this project? Among other things, German companies. For example, the Knauf company, the world leader in plaster production. Also because it has been doing important business in Russia for a long time. Company patriarch Nikolaus Knauf was Russian honorary consul for more than two decades; in photos he smiles next to President Putin. He retained this post even after the annexation of Crimea, and in 2018 he described the subsequent sanctions against Russia as “terrible”. Knauf says it continues to employ 4,000 people in Russia and has billions in sales there.
Even if building materials are not generally covered by the EU's sanctions rules, companies must be able to "effectively rule out that there is a military connection, any military connection, from what they supply." This “military relationship” arises from the client: an official Knauf dealer publicly advertises that he has built a residential building project with Knauf building materials on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Defense. The Monitor editorial team has photos of this construction site with Knauf sacks.
But Knauf is not an isolated case. In the images and videos evaluated by Monitor, concrete blocks in green packaging film are noticeable on numerous construction sites. On it is the logo of a German company from Münsterland in North Rhine-Westphalia - WKB Systems GmbH. The company equips, among other things, factories for the production of concrete blocks.
The company's main shareholder is the Russian oligarch Viktor Konstantinovich Budarin. Budarin used his German company as a supplier to the construction industry in Putin's Russia. Customs data available to Monitor show: For several years, WKB Systems GmbH supplied entire systems for factories for the production of such aerated concrete blocks to a Russian company from Budarin - apparently the very company with whose products Russia is trying to consolidate its power in Mariupol.
Numerous Russian oligarchs have already been sanctioned in recent years. Budarin is not one of them.
Read the full article here:
https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/monitor/ukraine-mariupol-wiederaufbau-russland-100.html (use the translation tool of your browser)
@ukrainejournal
