“Both sides have made mistakes,” said Daniel Drescher, 46, who lives across the street from the old KGB headquarters, which now houses an occult society. “The truth is in the middle.”

Drescher’s views are shared by many in Saxony, the most populous of Germany’s eastern states. Sixty-eight percent of people in the state, whose capital is Dresden, say their opinion of the Russian population has not changed since the invasion, according to a recent poll. Nearly 4 in 10 say their perceptions of Putin are also unchanged. Across eastern Germany, people are 13 percentage points less likely than in the west to say Putin’s Russia is a threat to their country, polling shows.

The difference reflects the former communist east’s four-decade history as a Soviet satellite state in which Russian-language instruction was required. It also reveals the effects of economic and cultural ties cultivated with Russia in the three decades since German reunification in 1990. And it testifies to the influence of far-right forces, which are ascendant in Saxony.