German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has contradicted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that genocide is taking place in eastern Ukraine. “That is a strong word … but it is wrong,” Scholz told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday. Putin’s statement stems from a heated verbal exchange with Scholz in the joint press conference after their meeting in the Kremlin. Putin said that NATO had bombed Belgrade in the late 1990s without a UN Security Council mandate. Scholz reacted to this by saying that a genocide had been prevented at the time. Putin countered that today there was a “genocide” in eastern…