00:00Were Germany's emergency generators all sent to Ukraine?
00:07For four days in freezing winter temperatures,
00:10tens of thousands of people in southwest Berlin were left without electricity,
00:14heating and in some cases mobile communications
00:17after an attack damaged a key part of the city's power grid.
00:20A far-left group against fossil fuels, calling itself the Volcano Group,
00:24claimed they were behind the attack.
00:30We have experienced our critical infrastructure, on our energy network.
00:34For a repeatable moment, we have to say that we will have to talk about it,
00:39how we can protect it in the future.
00:42But what's behind this claim?
00:44Most of these claims stem from an article by the Berliner Zeitung,
00:47which said Germany's Federal Agency for Civil Protection
00:50sent 1,700 generators to Ukraine since the start of Moscow's invasion.
00:55This article spiraled into angry social media posts,
00:59including AI-generated videos of emergency responders
01:03explaining that there were no generators left.
01:08If we look at the agency's website,
01:15it's true that Germany has delivered around 1,700 emergency power generators to Ukraine.
01:20However, the Interior Ministry said these were not from Germany's own stock,
01:24which continued to be used during the blackout.
01:27The delay in fixing the outage wasn't from a lack of generators,
01:31but complex work on a critical part of the energy grid that took time to repair.
01:35Nevertheless, the time it took to repair the grid caused real anger amongst residents,
01:40who question whether Berlin is prepared to handle such emergencies
01:43and raise questions about the behavior of politicians.
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