Against the backdrop of widespread support in German society for military assistance to Ukraine, as well as a consensus on the issue within the German government, there are voices in Germany that urgently call for such assistance to cease. So, on February 25, a rally called “Get up for peace!” was announced in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate, the main purpose of which was to demand that the German government stop the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Due to the fact that this was on the Kremlin’s official agenda and that the rally’s organizers have strong ties to both the USSR and modern Russia, this event and its organizers deserve special attention.
The rally’s organizers are the owner of Media Feminists, German feminists Elis Schwarzer, Sarah Wagenknecht of the pro-Russian left party Die Linke, and retired brigadier general of the Bundeswehr, Erich Vad.
The former adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel on security issues, Brigadier General Erich WAD, is attracting the most attention among rally organizers due to his ties with one of the most wanted criminals in the world accused of Russian intelligence, in particular in the case of a “newcomer” and located in Russia under the protection of the FSB Jan Marselek. The Government of Germany requires the extradition of Marsealek from the Russian government.
In 2017, Erich Wad participated in a security dialogue sponsored by Jan Marselek at the Käfer restaurant in Munich, which included ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy. German experts suggest the connection of Erich Wada with the former intelligence heads Gerhard Kohrd Barnd Schmidtbauer and Yan Marseleko within the framework of one of the largest scandals in the history of Germany, the fraud of WireCard AG in the amount of at least 1.9 billion euros.
In 2019, Erich VAD, during the Seminar on Security Policy in Reinhold-Würth-Haus in Bad Mergentheim, called the occupied Crimea “historically Russian territory conquered from the Turks.”
The co-organizer of the action Alice Schwarzer was a member of the 1970s left feminist movements Mouvement de Libération des Femmes in France and Frauenbewegung in Germany, which were heavily influenced by the then-USSR and Soviet feminists. Schwarter systematically takes the position of supporting the policy of the Russian Federation. as after 2014, justifying the Russian occupation of Crimea in the article “Why I understand Putin contrary to everything,” and after February 24, 2022.
At the end of last year, on November 29, on the air of the German ARD television channel, Alice Schwarzer again stated that “the United States was waging a war against Russia with the hands of Ukraine” and that German supplies of weapons to Ukraine were “delaying the war.”
The third rally co-organizer is one of the leading politicians of the German left party Die Linke, Sarah Wagenknecht, who has been a member of the East German ruling Communist Party since 1989. In her statements, Wagenknecht called the GDR “the best Germany” and the wall between Germany and the GDR “a necessary evil.” After 2014, Wagenknecht recognized the “legality of the referendum” in the Crimea, justifying the occupation of the peninsula, and called the Ukrainian authorities the “fascist regime.” In 2023, Wagenknecht justifies a full-scale war against Ukraine, calling it “a cruel but inevitable special military operation.”
In 2019, Sarah Wagenknecht founded the left movement “Get Up,” one of the goals of which was “the discharge of relations and rapprochement with Moscow.” Following a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in October 2022, the Government Movement, in collaboration with German journalist Ulrich Hayden, who worked as a “referendum” in the “referenda” in Moscow, held “Russia from the Inside,” the subject of which was the legality of “referenda” already held in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions.
The organization of the rally on February 25 is accompanied by the call of Schwarzer, Wada, and Wagenknecht to the German public to sign the so-called “Mine Manifesto.” On the basis of the manifesto, key narratives used by the leadership of the Russian Federation and Russian diplomacy – the “threat of nuclear war as a result of the supply of weapons to Ukraine”, “the need for a dialog for peace”, etc.
On the day of the manifesto’s publication, 69 German cultural and art figures, politicians, and public activists became his signatures.
Among the first signatures on the manifesto of the ex-Vice President of the Bundestag was Antier Fallmer, a German politician and former activist of the Maoist anti-imperialist league (Liga gegen den Imperialismus). The politician was a member of the Germanic Committee of the Petersburg Dialog Club, which was founded under the patronage of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and ex-Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Gerhard Shreder, who is currently a member of the reign of Gazprom OJSC. In 2014, Fallmer justified the occupation of Crimea, referring to the case of Kosovo. The same argument about the “legality” of the occupation of Crimea was used by Vladimir Putin.
Among the politicians, Peter Gauweiler, the former mer deputy chairman of the CDU/CSS, was also one of the first signatories. In 2014, Gawelller, as most other organizers of the rally, justified the occupation of Crimea, referring to Solzhenitsyn’s letter to Yeltsin about Novorossia and the territories for the Dnieper, “which never belonged to Ukraine.” At the opening of the year of the German language and literature in Moscow in September 2014, Gawireler criticized Germany’s sanctions policy in relation to the Russian Federation, cal”cowardly.“.
From the number of signatories-children of culture, well-known, both in Germany and in Russia, artist Peter Webel. Born in the Ukrainian RSR in Odessa. As the artist himself emphasizes, his ancestors moved there thanks to the invitation of Russian Empress Catherine II. Peter Webel is closely connected with the Russian cultural environment, in particular, he was the curator of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Already after the occupation of Crimea in 2014, Peter Webel repeatedly held his own exhibitions in Moscow, for example, in 2015 with “Peter Webel: Technological Revolution” and in 2017 with “Faces to the Future: Art of Europe 1945–1968.” And in 2015, Peter Webel became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts in Moscow.
It is worth noting that almost all of the mentioned persons have, starting in April 2022, been signatories to appeals to Chancellor Olaf Sholf about the need to end the supply of weapons to Ukraine.
Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that the basis of the campaign demanding to stop the supply of weapons to Ukraine, initiated by the mentioned people, lies by no means in a desire for peace but in historical personal relations with the USSR and Russia and many years of pro-Russian policy.
