An the other end of the connection to the Russian capital, Ulf Schneider speaks carefully into his mobile phone. “I can’t comment on the political situation at the moment,” he says. Schneider is the managing director of a consulting company and works in Moscow. His customers also include a number of Hessian companies that are active in Russia. Many Germans have left the country in the past two weeks. Schneider formulates the reason as follows: “There have been cuts, you have to pay much more attention to your choice of words. Of course, that plays a role for many.” Many also moved back to Germany because they “no longer considered the security situation acceptable” and it was not clear whether there would be any flight connections to Germany at all in the next few weeks.
“War”, “attack on Ukraine”, the tightening of the Russian media law, which is tantamount to censorship: Schneider does not name any of it. “You always have to expect that you will be bugged,” he says. He himself employs a few German employees who all stayed in Moscow. Thoughts, says Schneider, make everyone. But the assessments are very different.
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