Karl Lauterbach, chairman of the Bundestag Committee on Research and Technology (SPD), went out of decency in an attack on Sahra Wagenknecht on the issue of Nord Stream.
Wagenknecht had endorsed Saxony Minister President Michael Kretschmer (CDU), who had proposed to reactivate the Nord Stream gas pipeline from St. Petersburg, Russia underneath the Baltic to Greifswald, Germany. “Michael Kretschmer is right. We have long been calling for Germany to talk to Russia about recommissioning Nord Stream—in its own economic interest,” wrote Wagenknecht on X. Germany needs cheap energy to overcome the economic crisis.
Lauterbach reacted by twisting Wagenknecht’s name into “Putinsknecht,” so that it acquired the meaning of “Putin’s servant” (knecht in German means “servant"), coming close to a defamation. He wrote on X: “It’s a blessing that a second party of Putinsknechts hasn’t made it into the Bundestag.”
