Did Otto von Bismarck say Russia's strength can only be undermined by the secession of Ukraine? No, that's not true: According to a 2014 verification request by Deutsche Welle, Ulf Morgenstern, a researcher and scientist at the German Bismarck Foundation, said Germany's 19th-century statesman and diplomat Otto von Bismarck never made such a claim.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video where it was published on March 8, 2023 with a caption reading:
Russia's strength can only be undermined by the secession of Ukraine. It is necessary to not only cut off Ukraine from Russia but also to confront them, to turn two parts of one people into each other and watch how brothers kill each other.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken Mon July 24 10:10:21 CET 2023)
According to the Bismarck Foundation there is no evidence to support the claim that Bismarck expressed such a view based on the historical record, or the content of his speeches, letters or memoirs. Moreover, according to Morgenstern, Bismarck's memoirs mention a prediction about the "division of Russia," which Bismarck did not agree with.
The fabricated quote has been circulating among Russian authors who, according to a fact check by stopfake.org, "often use several citations about Ukraine, allegedly belonging to Chancellor of Germany Otto von Bismarck, in order to prove that Western Europe always wanted to divide Russia."
Ukrainian historian Alexander Pali shares the opinion that the quote about Ukraine and Russia's strength does not belong to Bismarck, instead, it is likely that the claim was attributed to Bismarck as part of Kremlin propaganda. "Bismarck's alleged quote is entirely different from the language that nineteenth-century diplomats used to speak and write," Pali added.
