Schroeder's Wife Slams Bild For 'Baiting,' Slander After Navalny's Interview

Ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's wife has accused the German Bild newspaper of conducting a targeted campaign against her husband and spreading slander in the wake of a recent interview with Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny

BERLIN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th October, 2020) Ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's wife has accused the German Bild newspaper of conducting a targeted campaign against her husband and spreading slander in the wake of a recent interview with Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny.

In his interview with Bild, Navalny accused Schroeder, who is now the chairman of the Nord Stream AG shareholders' committee, of receiving "secret payments" from the Russian authorities. He did not corroborate his claims, noting that this was his personal opinion. In response, Schroeder published a statement in which he has expressed his understanding of Navalny's "personal situation" and said that what had happened to him should be "transparently clarified" by the Russian authorities, but criticized the newspaper for publishing the claims without letting him provide his own stance on the matter. The former chancellor said that the situation forced him to take legal action against the newspaper.

"The baiting of my husband by the Bild newspaper offends me. I am from South Korea. We have achieved democracy and the rule of law there. Germany is my second homeland with a real democracy, which means that people can hold different views and express them openly in public.

But what the Springer media corporation [Axel Springer SE, digital publishing house which Bild newspaper] has done with my husband has nothing to do with democracy and freedom of opinion, but rather with slander and baiting," Soyeon Schroeder-Kim wrote on Instagram on Thursday.

She added that she was "outraged, but also upset that this is possible." The politician's wife also expressed regret that other media outlets, which she used to respect, had distributed the content of the interview.

In September, Navalny was discharged from Berlin's Charite clinic, where he was transported to from a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after falling ill aboard a domestic Russian flight on August 20.

While Russian doctors concluded that the main diagnosis was a metabolic disorder that caused a sharp change in the blood sugar level, the German government claimed to have evidence of his poisoning with a nerve agent from the Novichok group.

The opposition figure accuses the Russian authorities of being behind his alleged poisoning. Moscow rejects the claims as groundless and unacceptable, noting that no proof has ever been presented.