Bikers linked to the Russian motorcycle group called ‘Nachtwoelfe’ (Night Wolves) arrive at the former German Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, near Munich, yesterday.
DPA/Dachau
Russian bikers who entered Germany are not members of the Night Wolves motorcycle club, which is aiming to ride through Eastern and Central Europe to mark Moscow’s victory over Nazi Germany 70 years ago, police said yesterday.
None of the 10 people who crossed the border on Sunday from Austria are full members of the pro-Kremlin club, a Federal Police spokesman said from the agency’s headquarters in Potsdam, outside Berlin.
They are relatives and supporters of the group, and all of them had the proper papers to enter Germany, he said.
The group’s close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin have caused its members to be blocked from crossing borders several times on its trip, which has complicated its journey.
A woman related to a Night Wolves member also arrived on Sunday at Munich’s airport and was allowed entry into Germany, the police spokesman said.
But three Night Wolves leaders were stopped from entering Germany at one of Berlin’s airports, the foreign ministry said.
A member travelling by ferry from Finland was also detained on Sunday night in Luebeck.
His travel papers were being checked on suspicions that he lied about his reason for travel to Germany, a spokesman said.
Night Wolves supporters visited the Nazi concentration camp at the southern city of Dachau outside Munich yesterday.
Four men drove up to the camp on motorcycles, waving flags in Russia’s national colours of white, blue and red.
A priest with the Russian Orthodox chapel at the concentration camp said they lit candles and prayed before visiting the camp’s crematorium and leaving flowers at its memorial, five days after the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau death camp by US troops.
The group began its tour on April 25 in Moscow and intends to end it in Berlin on Sunday, which is Victory Day in Russia, the day every year it commemorates the capitulation of the Nazis to Soviet troops in World War II.
Germany’s government said it is sceptical about the club’s so-called Victory Tour but has no plans to interfere with the motorcycle convoy.
“The German government does not as a basic principle prevent people from commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said yesterday in Berlin.