00:00Now with a member of the German parliament from the AFD party, there is Dr. Rainer Rothfuss now
00:03joining us here on RT International. Appreciate you sharing your Saturday with us here in Moscow.
00:07Thank you, doctor, for your time today. It's my pleasure. So on one of the holiest days of the
00:13year, an archbishop from the Orthodox Church in Moldova was barred from going on a religious
00:17pilgrimage. I know you know the story. Essentially, the airport, the politicians, they stopped him
00:23twice in two days. They did exactly the same trick twice. Your thoughts on this? It's become
00:29quite a scandal. A lot of people are reacting to this story. What's your thought, doctor?
00:35Well, my first question is, who is behind that? If it's just the Moldovan government, it's bad
00:41enough. But if we look at Brussels, we should see condemnations of such acts. And I haven't
00:50heard of it so far, only from Moscow. So behind the scenes, I think, yeah, the aspirations are
00:58going in that direction, that Orthodox Christians shall feel discriminated. Tensions shall be rised
01:08between those groups of believers who belong together, who believe in the same message of
01:16Jesus Christ of Easter. And that makes it even worse. We have laws in Europe to protect minorities.
01:25And where are those laws now? To me, it seems like being an act of hybrid warfare. But of course,
01:34the EU only points towards Russia when they take this term into their mouths. But this is
01:41humiliation. This is deliberately igniting tensions between groups of believers who should, yeah,
01:49make an effort to ease tensions, to find the common ground for understanding, as long as politicians
01:57seem to fail. It's the spiritual leaders who have that task.
02:02Yeah. Yeah, it's a good comment there, doctor. I mean, you know, talk about divide and conquer and
02:05causing an uproar among the local public. You ought to wonder what these politicians are thinking,
02:09or have they been kind of caught up in this without even knowing? Because the people are going to be
02:13pissed off with the politicians, no doubt about it. Meantime, doctor, we saw pretty similar suppression of the
02:18Orthodox Church in Ukraine. In fact, much harder. Do you think Moldova in some way is following in
02:24Kiev's footsteps here? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's the same pattern of action. And it's also in
02:32conformity with the EU agenda. Everything being Orthodox, being Russian, shall be sidelined, shall be
02:41pushed out, shall be painted as being the other, the dangerous other. And that, of course, follows just
02:49a geopolitical agenda. The EU seems to be so weak in its uniting idea that it always needs
02:58an enemy threatening the EU from outside so they can force people together, weld them together.
03:06But this is really poor action. Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Agreed. I mean, look, Kiev, for example,
03:11tried to justify its crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church linked to Moscow by accusing it of
03:16being a tool of Russian influence. And now we're perhaps seeing something rooted in geopolitics
03:21happening in Moldova too. But, you know, considering Moldova's European Union ambitions,
03:28do you think we're going to be hearing any reaction from Brussels about this? And meantime,
03:32it's pretty quiet. Yeah. And I think it will be kept under the radar because it really,
03:40it contradicts the values of the European Union that have been upheld for so many decades and
03:47that the European Union was always proud of. But we have seen the same problem in the Baltic
03:53countries where Russian language speaking citizens have also been barred from certain civil rights,
04:05citizen rights. They have been granted only non-citizen passports. Where was the outcry
04:13of the European Union there? Those governments were never criticized for such a behavior. So it's,
04:20yeah, blatant double standard policies. Yeah. And last, last question, Dr. I'll let you get out
04:25of here on this. I get the political side of it, but what about, you know, the mainstream Western
04:30press, the legacy media? Why, why is the Western press not even talking about this with this
04:36archbishop from Moldova? Well, it does not seem into their narrative that the West is the good
04:44and Russia is the bad guy. Yeah. And therefore they just do not bring it. Yeah. They could wake
04:52people up and that's not their intention of it. Yeah. Yeah. At least officially. Yeah. Yeah. I think
04:57you're absolutely right. And it's a solid comment to wrap up our conversation here with Dr. Reiner
05:00Rothfuss, a German parliament member from the AfD party, making big strides in the world today. If indeed
05:06the AfD will be allowed to continue making big strides. Dr. Reiner Rothfuss, a big fan of your work,
05:13wishing you the best of luck. Thanks for your time.
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