A permanent exhibition about the Ukraine war opens at a former Nazi bunker in Berlin on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion Tuesday, \u00a0to encourage continued support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Weapons, other objects brought back from the front lines and testimonies from the conflict have been collected by the Berlin Story Bunker, a museum housed in a former World War II air raid shelter in the German capital.<\/p>\n
The aim is to raise public awareness about the “physical reality” of the conflict, museum curator Wieland Giebel told AFP.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian section is being added to the existing permanent exhibitions focusing on Nazism and Germany from 1945 to the present day.<\/p>\n
“Visitors to Germany can’t really imagine what war is like — we want to show it to them,” said Giebel, standing in front of the huge entrance to the bunker, built in 1943.<\/p>\n
Germany is one of Ukraine’s key backers; it is the biggest supplier of weapons to Kyiv in Europe and a major diplomatic ally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also hosts around 1.3 million Ukrainian refugees.<\/p>\n
Most Germans support Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but arms deliveries are a divisive topic in a country with a strong pacifist tradition due to its dark Nazi past.<\/p>\n
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is Russia-friendly, has also seen a surge in support in recent times, coming second in national polls last year.<\/p>\n
But Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government regularly reminds Germans that if Ukraine is defeated, Russia could turn its attention to other parts of Europe.<\/p>\n
Such fears have prompted his coalition to launch a rearmament drive that aims to transform the long-neglected German military into the largest conventional force in Europe.<\/p>\n
– ‘Ukraine is Europe’s shield’ –<\/p>\n
Giebel is determined that Ukraine should continue to receive support from Germany and the wider European Union, in particular through arms deliveries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the exhibition rooms, around 20 wrecks of Russian drones are suspended from the ceiling above a car gutted by a bomb.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vehicle was transported to the site from Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine occupied by Russian forces in 2022 before being recaptured by Ukraine. It remains under constant Russian fire.<\/p>\n
Personal testimonies seek to form connections with German visitors, such as a quote from Roman Schwarzman, a Holocaust survivor: “Hitler wanted to kill me because I am Jewish; Putin wants to kill me because I am Ukrainian.”<\/p>\n
On the exhibition’s information panels, the war in Ukraine is fitted into a narrative constructed around the idea of “Russian imperialism”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is linked to the Soviet Union’s invasion of eastern Poland in 1939, the crushing of the Prague Spring, and even Russia’s 2015 military intervention in Syria to support Bashar al-Assad, the country’s longtime ruler who was deposed in late 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The private Berlin museum had already made a name for itself on the first anniversary of the Ukraine war by displaying, in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin, the wreck of a destroyed tank that had been towed from the outskirts of Kyiv.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Attending an event Monday a day ahead of the new exhibition’s public opening, Hanna Maliar, a former Ukrainian deputy defence minister, welcomed Germany’s “military, political, and also cultural support”.<\/p>\n
Such backing was key, she stressed, as “Ukraine is the shield of Europe”.<\/p>\n
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