Pro-Russia protesters rally in Germany

Frankfurt: Pro-Russia protesters rallied in Germany on Sunday, with the country’s significant Russian-speaking population demanding an end to the discrimination it says it has suffered since war began in Ukraine.

Germany is home to 1.2 million people of Russian origin and 325,000 from Ukraine. Authorities fear the conflict could be imported into Germany and the protests used to promote Moscow’s war narrative.

Police have recorded 383 anti-Russian offences and 181 anti-Ukrainian offences since the Kremlin’s invasion started on February 24. Around 600 people descended on financial hub Frankfurt on Sunday amid a sea of Russian flags to protest "against hatred and harassment", an AFP journalist saw, and there was a heavy police presence.

"I came here because I support peace, children are beaten at school because they speak Russian, that’s not acceptable," Ozan Yilmaz, 24, told AFP. "The war didn’t start this year, it has been going on since 2014 and so I find that speaking of an attack" against Ukraine by Russia is "not really appropriate", said Sebastian, 25, who was in the crowd.

Police threw up a large cordon to separate the protesters -- marching behind a banner that read "Truth and diversity of opinion over PROPAGANDA" -- from a pro-Ukraine counter-demonstration of around 100 people near the city’s central banking district.

Approximately 600 demonstrators staged a car convoy in the northern city of Hanover following an appeal by the Russian-speaking community, local police told AFP. Police said they were closely monitoring the convoy. A counter-demonstration in the city under the banner "Support Ukraine!" attracted 3,500 people, according to police.

Similar protests were held on Saturday in Stuttgart and in the northern city of Lubeck, where around 150 people took part. Lubeck police said they stopped a convoy of around 60 vehicles because it broke the law by expressing support for "Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine" and using "banned symbols".

Meanwhile, the long-simmering debate over UN reform -- and particularly over the role of the Security Council, which does not represent today’s world and which failed to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine -- has suddenly become acute.

Recently Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a blistering call for the UN to exclude Russia from the Security Council, asked bluntly, "Are you ready to close the UN" and abandon international law. "If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately."

And after the Security Council failed to prevent the brutal invasion of his country, he said in a separate address to Japanese lawmakers, "We have to develop a new tool" capable of doing so.

Created in 1945 with a vision of guaranteeing world peace and preventing a World War III, the United Nations conferred disproportionate power on the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council -- the US, Russia, China, Britain and France -- in a way that allows them to protect their own interests while keeping a heavy hand in world affairs.

Thus, since 2011, Moscow has exercised its Security Council veto some 15 times in votes regarding its ally Syria. But the veto power also guarantees that Moscow can never be removed from the Council, since the UN Charter’s Article 6 allows the General Assembly to exclude a member only ... upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

In that vein, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003 without UN approval -- and without suffering any consequences for their permanent seats on the Security Council. Beyond the veto question, and the lack of international balance among Security Council members -- no African or Latin American country holds a permanent seat -- the Council grants a near-monopoly on some issues to Washington, London and Paris. The division of roles among the 15 Security Council members is uneven, according to the ambassador of one of the current 10 non-permanent members. The latter group, elected for two-year terms, is "given the bureaucratic jobs."

"We don’t think it’s a fair division of labor," the ambassador said, speaking on grounds of anonymity. The Council has been widely denounced for its current -- and recurrent -- paralysis, with even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres deploring its failures.

Meantime, the airport in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro has been badly damaged in fresh Russian shelling, a local official said on Sunday. "There has been another attack on Dnipro airport. There is nothing left of it. The airport itself and the infrastructure around it has been destroyed," the head of the city’s military administration, Valentin Reznichenko, said on Telegram.

"Rockets keep flying and flying," he added. He said authorities were seeking to clarify information about victims. An AFP reporter saw black smoke in the sky above the airport and fire trucks entering its grounds.

A plane also took off from the airport later on Sunday, suggesting the runway was still functioning. Reznichenko said attacks on the city, which lies on the banks of Dnieper River, intensified on Sunday.

In a related development, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday (today), the first European leader to meet him since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Vienna said Sunday.

"He is going there, having informed Berlin, Brussels and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky" to encourage dialogue, said a spokesman for Nehammer, who was in Ukraine on Saturday. The spokesman confirmed he is the first European leader to meet Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Nehammer took the initiative himself and organised the meeting during his stay in Ukraine, wanting "to do everything so that progress towards peace can be made" even if the chances are minimal, he added. He intends to talk to the Kremlin about "war crimes" in the town of Bucha outside Kyiv, which he visited on Saturday.