Düsseldorf – Düsseldorf no longer wants this friendship.
The state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia is putting the city partnership with Moscow on hold. Mayor Stephan Keller (51, CDU) communicates this to his counterpart there, Sergei Semjonowitsch Sobyanin (63), in a letter that is currently on its way to the Russian capital.
According to a statement on Friday evening, Keller said: “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is an unprecedented act of aggression, an intolerable breach of international law that we can only condemn in the strongest possible terms. We in Europe, in Germany and in Düsseldorf are now called upon to show solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”
The city partnership with Moscow was sealed in 1992, shortly after the end of the Cold War. Other Düsseldorf partners are Reading (United Kingdom, since 1947/1988), Chemnitz (since 1988), Haifa (Israel, since 1978/1988), Warsaw (Poland, since 1989), Chongqing (People’s Republic of China, since 2004), Palermo ( Italy, since 2016) and Chiba (Japan, since 2019).
–
