Merz: Putin "may be the most serious war criminal of our time"
https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/09/02/merz-putin-may-be-the-most-serious-war-criminal-of-our-time/Open linkView original on scribe.disroot.org285
Comments87https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/09/02/merz-putin-may-be-the-most-serious-war-criminal-of-our-time/Open linkView original on scribe.disroot.org
you forgot mr. genocide down in zion...
Perhaps you forgot Mr. Genocides (plural) in Beijing. It goes to show that we should be careful with hyperboles. This isn‘t a contest after all.
Title is for the "most serious war criminal of our time". There's no hyperbole here. It literally is a genocide measuring contest.
But that‘s the problem. Just because that lunatic of a leader frames it like one doesn‘t mean we have to participate in it.
Or...you can rightfully point out that he should apply the same standard to Netanyahu, since the death toll in Gaza is several times higher than it is in Ukraine. After all, by his own words, there should be "zero tolerance" when dealing with war criminals.
If that is how he chooses to frame it...then make sure the frame encompasses all the available data.
There's only one genocide going on right now. And it's in Palestine. There's no genocide in Xinjiang. I was there last year. There's 24.000 mosques in Xinjiang, Muslims all over and none will tell you they are being mass murdered. Propaganda from the people who are actually commuting genocide...
The Satellite Photos of Uyghur Concentration Camps tell a different story...
Satellite photos don't tell shit. Travel there.
That's just not true. Russia is (or at least was, I'll admit to not keeping up as much with Ukraine) doing genocide as well. Entire towns have been slaughtered and children were taken away to be reeducated, that's genocide too.
Yes because it is only a genocide (tm) if you can see the smoke stacks from the crematoriums from groundlevel /s
Comes easily at the second place. But it's only one nation, while Putin is killing several nations at the same time.
Why easily? E.g. the Iraq war was also without UN mandate and depending on analysis could have more civilian casualities.
A genocide is a worse thing than "just" killing several hundred thousand civilians. And of course, just alone the destruction of Mariupol gets at least close to 10 000 killed civilians, possibly more.
Lets keep to real figures please. Ukrainian sources estimated shortly after that around 25,000 people were killed and a later independent investigation found likely evidence for around 10,000 killed.
Now the number of zeroes is correct. Thanks!
Putin, in terms of a single person (don't forget Israel has had multiple
dictatorsPMs), IS the biggest war criminal alive.Only because USA presidents only last 8 years in power at most
@ICastFist …. we all hope. Wasn’t there also a term limit in Russia at some point?
No idea, I'd have to look that up. All I know is that Putin getting elected in the first place, back in 2000, was questionable, to say the least.
Netanyahu
I'd say Putin and Netanyahu are about the same. Two illiberal state leaders seeking to genocide a people.
The global support makes Netanyahu worse
Netanjahu defends Israel against Hamas terrorists. And Hesbolla terrorists in Lebanon. Why is he a war criminal in your opinion?
@glowing_hans you don’t expect to be taken seriously, do you? 😂
#everyone! Here’s a disinformation campaigner!
#callthemout #disinformation
lol this one is literally glowing, you can see them in the dark
There is no genocide in gaza, just a hostage rescue operation.
Permaban.
Lots of zionists around here lately, whats up with that
Follow the money.
Good job derailing with antisemitic dog whistles.
Zionist ≠ Zionists. While most forms of zionism do suck, reform zionists are an exception. Sadly they are a minority. Reform zionists believe in equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians and seek to end the blatant human rights violations in Israel and Palestine while not being against the existence of Israel (hence why it is still Zionism).
Reform Zionism is practically no different from Liberal Zionism. You can't have a Jewish State in historic Palestine unless you solve the 'demographic problem' to ensure there is a Jewish majority. That's also why they have no mention of Right of Return and support the Two-State Solution, to keep the vast majority of Palestinians out of this Jewish State. Not to mention that the Two-State Solution has no basis in reality. It's a One-state reality, an apartheid state. The Two-State has always been used by Zionists to justify denying Right of Return and Palestinian Sovereignty while the more honest 'right-wing' Zionists (Zionism is a fascist ideology, it's all right-wing ) continue the settlement projects.
If they genuinely wanted equal rights for Palestinians, they would be anti-zionist. Same as Ilan Pappe or Avi Schlaim or Adi Callai or any of the other anti-zionist Israelis.
You can say "I'm retarded" with only two words. Save your fingers the effort.
Merz's questionable judgement aside, what would we gain from having a nice ranking of war criminals?
Shouldn't our spineless politicians concentrate on trying to stop war criminals (all of them) instead of starting academic discussions on who's the "most serious"?
a Top Trumps war criminals
Yeah, the only ranking in that regard should be "is" and "is not". Everything else seems like a distinction without a difference.
It really is not just academic. Resources to stop war criminals are limited. So generally speaking given the choice it is better to prevent a million deaths then a 100.
Limited resources are a very underhanded, if quite popular, excuse to justify inaction.
"We don't have infinite resources, so we can't do anything" is something that's been repeated over and over in all contexts (and, lately, especially by the right to justify sweeping the migration problem under the rug by paying off Libya/Turkey/etc instead of actually doing something about it).
People (and countries) should be only allowed to complain about limited resources after they actually exhausted their resources and done all they could: first you do all you can, and only then you can complain that you couldn't do more.
The decisions of when you have exhausted resources and done all you can are often political decisions. They're not factual.
So the only time limited resources are a valid complain by Merz is Germany being nuked to ashes and “We don’t have infinite resources, so we can’t do anything” being his last words.
There are a lot of other problems, which need to be dealt with. Requiring everything to be thrown at a single problem is foolish. There are also other limits such as nukes around, which make certain actions too risky. Requrining perfection is a hell of a standard and it is bound to lead to disapointment.
At the same time limited resources does not imply doing nothing. For example in the case of Putin, there are weapons and financial aid to Ukraine as well as sanctions against Russia. That are real resources being spend.
Can you please explain what the actual fuck you're talking about? What are "resources" here and who is "allocating" them?
Context? As in "who" our dear politicians and resources as in military, intelligence, police and economic resources, which can be used to stop war criminals. Basically what somebody like Merz can do to stop what is going on in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar and so on.
Idk, I would probably say that Netanjahu is even worse.
He doesn't have nearly the power or reach of Putin. Also, Putin's been at this for a long time.
Merz should win the most seriously spineless European politician of the year.
Funny how using the superlative form ("most") he's sending us into a tailspin about who is "the most serious war criminal". As if that ordering really matters. War criminals being bad is like pedophiles being bad. Sure some are "worse" than others, but all of them are fucking creeps that need to be brought to heel.
Putin, Netanyahu, Trump, past US presidents (yea even that one), Blair, etc. All fuckfaces that every reasonable person should be denouncing.
of our time, i’d definitely put Netanyahu up there
Netanyahu seems to have be the closest to the violence. Not the most prolific. He has probably killed over half a million, directly and indirectly ,over his long career .
But while others have killed more ; they are more removed from it, more intermediaries, less day to day involvement with the actual victims .
I know you didn't actually mean "directly" as in, he was on the field taking skulls for the skull throne, but I did chuckle at the thought.
This comment should be stickied cause its very relevant to the post.
Honestly, there's more stiff competition for the title lately than for the peace prize.
Israel has murdered more children than all other killings in the same time period. Also more bombs dropped on Gaza than on Tokyo in WWII.
Sudan has some estimates of half a million children starved to death in that period. Putins war in Ukraine is also extremely deadly. Add to that the civil wars in Myanmar and Syria.
OP quotes these numbers:
That's a Sudan rounding error. Why does the difference in attention not worry people?
And he is absolutely right. Putin doesn't care about honor, dignity and ethics. He is interested in expanding and maintaining his power and is prepared to artificially keep his war alive as long as he has to answer to the Russian and Ukrainian people. Anyone who invites a criminal into their home will soon be a victim of the criminal's games. Only toughness can stop the insane nationalism of the Russians, deadly toughness.
Putin's a complete total psychopath for whom human life has no value.
And yet he's fucking Mother Theresa of Calcuta by comparison with mass baby murderer Netanyahu whose troops actively target children.
You will notice that Merz has "forgotten" about Netanyahu is this "most serious war criminal of our time" scale.
This is all smoke & mirrors: German mainstream politicians loved Putin and they especially loved the money they got paid when they retired from politics for "consuting work" or even board memberships in companies like Gazprom, and it took months and a lot of pressure from everybody else in the West to get Germany to start disconnecting from Russia and reduce the money they sent Putin's regime for things like gas which was used by the likes of BASF as cheap raw material in their processes to get a competitive advantage over other chemical companies. Also getting them to actually start supporting Ukraine militarily was like trying to pull teeth out - I remember how everybody and their dog had to send tanks to Ukraine before Germany finally got around to sending their old tanks there.
I very much doubt that these statements from Merz are any more than pure image management, especially because his "unwavering support of the Jewish State" (his own words) has showned that for him too, just like for Putin, human life has no value when a person is not from the "right" ethnicity.
Here I'd like to point out that Putin isn't really better even in this regard. Among the most important targets for Russian drone attacks are maternity hospitals. Then there have been attacks against children's hospitals.
“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” (a famous person from what's now called Palestine)
In what world is Merz even close to as bad as Putin, let alone significantly worse. The worsed he did was deliver weapons and political backing to Israel. Putin has started the largest war in Europe since WW2 and is activly involved in a lot more conflicts like the massive civil war in Sudan and Syria.
I don’t think the point of that quote is to measure who has the most or least amount of wood, but to point out the hypocrisy of complicity and selective condemnation.
The line before it is: " For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
So yes it is clearly about measuring who has the most wood. As in if you have more, then do not judge. Merz is fine in that respect. He has claimed to stop German weapon deliveries to Israel, due to Israeli war crimes in Gaza. So clearly he is even willing to be judged on that. Besides that he says and does a lot of bs, but nothing which comes close to war crimes afaik.
If you want to talk about measurement, then you cannot deny that Germany is complicit in war crimes still to this day (as is my own nation). By all means condemn Russia, but while facilitating a settler colonial project then the label of hypocrisy always applies, which is what the quote I posted refers to.
Your words on Merz would have more credibility if his moves didn’t have so many loopholes. It will take more than symbolic gestures to break the ties between industrial genocide and German tech: https://mondoweiss.net/2025/08/germanys-declaration-to-stop-sending-weapons-to-israel-symbolic-gesture-or-major-shift/
At what point did I deny that?
You said, "Merz is fine in that respect".
Yes I believe that Merz delivering weapons to Israel is less evil then the many crimes Putin has committed. Nicaragua is also suing Germany over the matter, so in a way Merz is actually being judged for it.
Tough words for Mr MealyMouth. I wish he would do that more often.
I'm the opposite. I wish he would stfu. Idealy forever.
Brutal Escalation of Large-Scale Russian Federation Attacks on Ukraine Setting Grim Casualty Records, Jeopardizing Fragile Diplomatic Momentum, Security Council Hears
As much as I'd love to agree with it because it's damned close to being true, the real winner is Netanyahu, of course
So many to choose from
And just like the orange one he is allowed to continue actively being
Wait for China and North Korea, together with India ...
Foreign type he is good. No weapon to Isreal and this. Really.
I may be applying a stereotype, but having a German calling someone "serious" could, if anything, even sound like a compliment.
What does it even mean? A "serious crisis" or a "serious medical condition" is a negatively charged, but not "serious criminal".
Arséne Lupin is a serious criminal and that's a compliment. I am VERY curious about the choice of words.
Also @[email protected] is right, if this is a ranking, it is pointless if not counterproductive.
The original quote is "den vielleicht schwersten Kriegsverbrecher unserer Zeit".
I think "most severe war criminial" would be a better translation.
maybe he's just calling him fat
I've watched a lot of German documentaries and I'm 99% sure he's actually saying he wants Putin to take a dump in his mouth.
Is the word in questions "schwersten"?
Yep. And it has like a dozen different English translations, depending on context.