Germany: A new radical left party calls for negotiations with Moscow

The Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, which emerged from the split from the Left party, defends rapprochement with Russia. In addition, the group wants to defend the working class and calls for a reduction in the number of migrants.

Published on January 27, 2024 2:53 p.m. Updated on January 27, 2024 3:49 p.m

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Sahra Wagenknecht, chairwoman of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, during the first party conference on January 27, 2024 in Berlin (Germany). (JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP)

A fanfare start for the new German right-wing populist party. Her co-chair, Sahra Wagenknecht, called on her country to negotiate with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine during the first party congress on Saturday, January 27, in Berlin, Germany.

In front of around 450 founding members of this party, who had gathered in the Kosmos, a former GDR cinema on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin, she also pleaded for Germany to stop supplying weapons to Kiev. “We are supplying weapons to Ukraine for a victory that, unfortunately, even the Ukrainian generals no longer believe in. (…) This war must be ended, and very quickly through negotiations,” she said to applause.

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This party, whose full name is Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BWS) – for Reason and Justice, was founded on January 8th around this charismatic 54-year-old personality, who was born in Jena in then-communist Germany. Sahra Wagenknecht left the party “Die Linke” last October together with nine other colleagues, thus sealing the split in this formation, the successor to the Communist Party of the GDR.

Particularly popular in East Germany

Sahra Wagenknecht's movement takes up ideas that are close to the extreme right's hearts, such as reducing the number of migrants or ending arms deliveries to Ukraine. He also defends rapprochement with Moscow in order to provide Germany with a cheap energy supply.

This year the new party has two electoral options: the European elections on June 9 and the elections in three eastern regions in September. A breakthrough for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is expected in these two elections. Sahra Wagenknecht, who remained a communist after the fall of the Berlin Wall, shares her mistrust of the West with many East Germans.

Sahra Wagenknecht is particularly popular in the former GDR. In her speech, she was clearly aimed at voters who might be sensitive to certain ideas of the AfD, which is particularly popular in the East. And to add: “If we advocate for peace, we are called right-wing extremist, if we defend farms and farmers, we are right-wing extremist, (…) if we demand a limit on immigration and are worried about Islamist parallel societies, then we are .” are right-wing extremists.”