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Julian Röpcke is a German journalist.

Biography

Röpcke has no formal qualification as a journalist. According to his XING profile, he studied human geography at Potsdam university from 2002-2010. As stated on his website, he has been following political developments since 2003. Between 2013-2015, Röpcke was a scientific assistant at "KatLeuchttürme", an emergency management research project at the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Propaganda

Röpcke is the founder of conflictreport.info. Altough not directly stating it, Röpcke has a clear anti-Russian bias. Despite reporting mostly on Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East, he doesn't speak either Russian, Ukrainian or Arabic.

Since May 2015, he is working with BILD, arguably Germany's most controversial newspaper. Bild has an infamous reputation for sensationalistic headlines, has often been accused of having a right-wing bias and also has a long history of spreading propaganda and false claims. The newspaper's publishing house, Axel Springer SE, also requires its journalists to be supportive of the "transatlantic alliance with the United States of America" and "the western community" in its [editorial policy. When joining Bild, Röpcke praised the newspaper for its "journalistic integrity"

At Bild, Röpcke has interviewed Mikael Skillt, a former Swedish sniper and Neonazi fighting in Ukraine. Although he has given up some of his racist beliefs, he still considers himself a nationalist and is a member of Azov batallion, a volunteer batallion that has been characterized as being either far-right or neo-nazi. Skilt openly boasted about having killed many pro-Russian insurgents in Eastern Ukraine in interviews and on Twitter. Röpcke defended Skillt against criticism and hosted a discussion in Kiev, that included Skillt and Thomas C. Theiner, who called for the "flattening" of the Russian city of Belgorod and the use of nuclear weapons against Russia. German blogger Zlatko Percinic, who has visited Eastern Ukraine, accused Röpcke of knowingly spreading manipulated facts and serving as a propagandist for the Azov batallion. Similarly

On Twitter, Röpcke has fully sided with Syrian rebels, often retweeting their propganda images. He commented a picture of a beheaded Syrian soldier by saying "What did you expect?" and described Russia as the "axis of evil". Röpcke also stated that"supporting Assad is supporting ISIS" and, "as a pragamatist", he sees Islamist groups in Syria as "the best option". When Jean-Claude Juncker stated that "Russia must be treated decently", Röpcke negatively responded to that on Twitter.