After the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, naturally, many people in Germany feared that their security was also under threat. They feared that once Russia takes over Ukraine, it will move on to Eastern European countries. Germans, as well as most NATO members, are certain that in its war against Russia Ukraine is also defending the West.
However, Wagenknecht, a controversial figure among the most popular German politicians, sees things differently, and supports the Kremlin.
In particular, after the uncovering of Russian war crimes in Bucha, Wagenknecht insisted that Ukraine should continue peace talks with Russia, which were then underway in Istanbul, insisting that it was in the interests of the United States to escalate the war in order to weaken Russia as much as possible.
In February 2023, Wagenknecht joined Alice Schwarzer, a leading anti-war activist and editor of the feminist journal EMMA, to put forward a Manifest für Frieden (Manifesto for Peace) and launch the online petition against Germany’s arms deliveries to Ukraine and in favor of Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations. So far, the petition has reached more than nine hundred thousands signatures.
The antiwar demonstration, led by Wagenknecht and Schwarzer, attracted around 13,000 people to the Brandenburg Gate on 25 February 2023, caused intense debate in the German media, but did not produce the momentum that the organizers might have hoped for.
In April 2023, The Washington Post published information about Russia’s plans to undermine Germany’s support for Ukraine , based on leaked classified documents, and according to which Russia was planning an “anti-war coalition” involving the German far right and far left, including Sahra Wagenknecht.
In January 2024, at the founding conference of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — Reason and Justice (BSW), primarily made up of former members of the German political party The Left, Ms Wagenknecht declared her party’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war:
“We supply them with weapons till a victory, which Ukraine’s own generals no longer believe in,”. “No to war, no to weapons exports in combat zones.”
The website of the newly created BSW states that Europe “needs a stable security architecture, which in the long run should also include Russia”.
Now Sahra Wagenknecht is reassuring her voters even more, lulling them into a false sense of security: “Putin has no chance of invading Germany. An army that has failed to conquer Kyiv has no realistic chance of marching to Germany via Poland at some point”.
After the release of military aid for Ukraine by the US Congress became an accomplished fact, Wagenknecht commented on this in the “Table.Media” podcast: «I’d find it better if Russia had been given a proposal: ‘We will no longer supply weapons if you are prepared to agree to a ceasefire immediately'”.
In her opinion, after all, the weapons that the West has supplied to Ukraine so far have not turned the tide of the war.
A ceasefire is the goal of Wagenknecht’s party, as she has repeatedly made clear. Dialogue is the key. Gerhard Schröder could act as a mediator. “If there was someone in my party who had such a contact, I would say: ‘We’re not talking about this publicly, go there and try to find out under what conditions he would agree to a ceasefire?”
However, the “agreement” promoted by Wagenknecht actually suggests freezing the front line, and denying the return of temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories by military force.
No doubt, Sahra Wagenknecht’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war has remained largely unchanged, continuing to spark both support and concern among her voters.
