Germany’s new leftists challenge the pro-Ukraine mainstream

Germany’s new leftist populist party wants major parties to pay a high price for helping them run three eastern states: they want their regional leaders to join calls for Ukraine to stop getting weapons.

Such concessions could weaken the support for Ukraine in Germany, which is Kyiv’s second-largest armed ally in its fight against Russia’s full-scale attack of its neighbor. They are also making things worse in Berlin, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government alliance is already barely holding on.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which was formed in January, is the only party besides the far-right AfD that is against supporting Ukraine. It is an outcast because other parties won’t work with it.

After winning elections in September in Brandenburg, Thuringia, and Saxony, the BSW is almost a must-have partner for major parties that want to join coalitions in those states.

The party that supports Russia but doesn’t like NATO is named after a leader who caused a lot of disagreement. Sahra Wagenknecht wants its regional branches to make any possible partners agree with its anti-war views as a condition of forming an alliance.

But because of that, this week the Brandenburg branch of Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) backed a statement with the BSW that said, “More weapons will not end the war.”

The text, which also said bad things about the idea of putting U.S. long-range weapons in Germany, caused a lot of anger in Berlin and unease among some SPD members.

Agnieszka Brugger, a top Greens member and a junior partner in Scholz’s government, said that the SPD was giving in to the BSW’s “cynical and populist course.”

“Anyone who talks about peace but means an end to support for Ukraine does not want real peace,” she told the news agency. “Such a policy would jeopardize the security of our country and our allies.”

“Unacceptable” language from the Brandenburg party was called out by Dieter Reiter, the mayor of Munich and a member of the SPD.

Some polls show that public support for Ukraine is already waning at a crucial time, when Russia is making battlefield advances and U.S. policy on Ukraine depends on the results of the election on November 5, even though Germany’s state governments don’t have direct control over foreign policy. This is why the BSW took a stand.

Stefan Marschall, a political scientist at the University of Duesseldorf, said that the BSW’s moves are also strengthening the SPD’s usually pro-Russian left wing.

Matthias Miersch, a leftist, was named General Secretary of the SPD last month. He seems to be helping Gerhard Schroeder get back on track. Schroeder is a former minister who worked for the Russian oil company Gazprom and is friends with President Vladimir Putin.

DANGER OF AN IMPLOSION

Using both protective economic policies and an anti-immigration attitude, the BSW won by double digits in all three states in September. Polls show that they will likely win 7–9 percent of the vote at next year’s federal election.

That has made Wagenknecht, 55, a smart man who used to work as a Leninist theorist for the old East German Communist Party, from a cult figure with little political importance to a regular on talk shows.

But there are signs that her demands on local party bosses are already putting her power to the test, which in turn is putting the young party’s unity to the test.

Katja Wolf, the popular former mayor of Eisenach and regional leader of the BSW in Thuringia, was happy for coalition talks with the SPD and the conservatives to keep talk of war and peace to a vague, non-binding introduction.

Wolf said she joined the new party because she was scared of how well the far-right was doing in her state. She said the most important thing was to build a safe government.

Wolf got in big trouble with the party offices, who wanted a more “recognisable BSW signature” on the deal.

Some people say Wagenknecht would rather give up regional power than water down her message before the national election, which is the bigger prize.

According to Oliver Lembcke, a political scientist at the University of Bochum, Wagenknecht has a bad history of keeping political groups going. He said that the BSW could still fall apart.

The “Rise Up” project she started in 2018 didn’t last more than a year. She said at the time that she left the movement because she was tired of it.