During a visit to a university in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin told students that Germany is still occupied by US troops and is not an independent state. “Formally and legally, the American occupation troops are located on the territory of the Federal Republic. That’s a fact, and there are a lot of them there,” Putin said today in a conversation with a student shown on state TV.
Russia and its leadership are repeatedly criticized internationally for misinformation and false propaganda.
US as a NATO member protecting power
The US also sees Germany as a sovereign state. The American soldiers stationed in Germany are there with the permission of the federal government – and not, as in the case of the bloody Russian occupation of Ukraine, against the wishes of the state leadership. As a member of NATO, the US has troops stationed in other European countries and is considered a protective power.
Putin spoke to the handpicked students in the style of a conspiracy teller and said, for example, that European elites did not serve the interests of their states, but of others – namely the US. There are even German politicians who say that Germany was never an independent state after World War II, Putin said.
One student told the president that she had to leave Vienna because the university asked her to sign a document declaring Russia a “state of terror”. “I didn’t sign this,” she said, asking Putin for a job in the presidential administration. A 24-year-old education student said he had already fought in the war in eastern Ukraine and was looking for a career with the FSB domestic intelligence agency. Putin himself was once the head of the FSB.