Vienna police defends holding controversial seminar with Russian propagandists

The police of Vienna, Austria, has defended holding a seminar about Ukraine held by lecturers from the organization “Coordination Council of the Organization of Russian Compatriots” (KSORS) at the end of June.

"We are now being accused of having offered a 'stage for Kremlin propaganda' with the event in question at the end of June: We can vehemently disagree: Rather, it was a discussion event in which different speakers presented different approaches to the Ukraine war and its causes, both from a pro-Ukrainian and from a pro-Russian point of view. The latter was also received by the audience as very controversial, and in the plenary session there were some violent contradictions.

The Vienna State Police Headquarters distances itself from the published subjective representations and opinions," it tweeted.

The seminar included such entrances as pro-Russian activists discussing Ukrainian nationalism as an "ideology of hate against Russians."

A historian from Luhansk alleged about the fact that the term "Ukraine" was hardly used in the 17th century, but also told of a controversial incident in February 2014, which at least was used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify the Crimean annexation.

Psychologist Dmitri K., meanwhile, took a critical look at campaigns by the Ukrainian diaspora, such as criticism of a poster by the Vienna Chamber of Commerce showing a Russian-Ukrainian couple, as the "open emergence" of an "ideology of hatred against the Russians or total annihilation."