Destruction bassist and vocalist Marcel "Schmier" Schirmer has some very specific thoughts on Russian president Vladimir Putin. In an interview with Blabbermouth, Schmier called Putin "the new Hitler" and says he needs to be stopped. Schmier went on to recognize that Russian oil still plays a big part in Russia's presence in Europe, and lament the situation in Ukraine.
"Of course, there's the war. Now we have the first time, all those pictures. The modern world is there with a camera all the time and we see the brutality of the war. Nobody wants this war; the Russians don't want it either. It's their president. How do you stop a maniac like this? As a German, I feel like he is the new Hitler and needs to be stopped. But the problem is that we all depend on him, at least in Europe, which is breast-fed on his gas and oil.
"We have to cut this immediately. It's just heartbreaking. I've been to Ukraine. Our lighting engineer is a Ukrainian woman, Lena, she gets the news from Ukraine and shows us pictures and her family is suffering over there. It's so brutal to see this in the world today, 2022 when we're so educated. How can this still happen? I don't know."
The latest in a series of atrocities committed by Russia against Ukraine included a missile attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region that killed at least 50 civilians.
