Sahra Wagenknecht, the leader of the newly established German party Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), has come out strongly against her government’s policy of continued escalation in Ukraine against Russia, and demanded that Berlin instead consider the peace offer from Russian President Putin. Speaking in the Bundestag June 26, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz—whom she addressed directly—sitting behind the podium, Wagenknecht said, according to text from TASS: “You cannot fill budget holes, but money for weapons for Ukraine and record-large orders for Rheinmetall and Co. is seemingly unlimited. The most dangerous thing about it is that this policy can gradually lead to a big European war. This scares a lot of people,” Wagenknecht said emphatically. She added that citizens expect their government to do everything they can to stop this war from happening and to bring it to an end through negotiations.
It does not mean that we should accept Putin’s current conditions, she said, but, “A ceasefire at the current frontline as a starting point for peace talks would be a realistic scenario. Why don’t you support China or Brazil, who demand exactly that?” Russian President Putin has proposed that Ukraine withdraw all its forces from the four provinces which voted to join Russia, in which case Russia would do the same.
Instead, Germany supports the “maximum demands of [Ukrainian acting President] Zelenskyy, who wants to hold peace talks only after the Russians withdraw their forces from Crimea and Donbass,” she said.
