Published 10 September 2024 at 14.58
Foreign. After AFD and Sahra Wagenknecht's success in the election, the German government is now abandoning the bloody line that Sweden and the majority of EU countries have towards Russia, which amounts to 100 percent military confrontation. Berlin will now instead participate in peace negotiations shortly, announced the country's Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
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– Election results show that there a lot of citizens who do not share our opinion about the support for Ukraine, says Olaf Scholz to Germany's state television channel ARD.
The chancellor now says that he wants to take the initiative for a peace conference on Ukraine in which Russia also participates, something that the war- and immigration-critical Alternative for Germany (AFD) party interprets as the government giving in to their demands.
Under in an interview with ZDF, another state German media, on Sunday Scholz said:
– There will definitely be a new peace conference. And the president [Zelensky] and I agree that Russia must be included.
This statement comes after Russia was excluded from the international peace conference on the war in Ukraine held in Switzerland in June.
< p>According to Bild newspaper, Zelenskyj and Scholz have discussed the issue in confidential talks at a meeting in Ramstein last week.
After the summit in Switzerland, Zelenskyj already then expressed a desire for Russia to participate in the next conference.
Scholz also acknowledged that support for Germany's military aid to Ukraine has declined in some regions, particularly in the former East Germany.
In last week's regional elections in eastern Germany, parties opposed to arms deliveries to Ukraine received nearly half of the votes.
Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) received less than 10 percent of the vote in both elections.
AFD, which made significant progress in the elections, welcomed Scholz's statement.
The party's one spokesperson Tino Chrupalla wrote on the platform X:
“We have long demanded peace negotiations that include all warring parties – including Russia. It is good that the Chancellor is now complying with our demand.”
The newly formed establishment-critical left party BSW, led by Sahra Wagenknecht, also praised Scholz's initiative.
The party, which advocates a negotiating line towards Russia, performed strongly in the election and has made this a condition for supporting regional governments.
In the past, the German government has claimed that it is Russia that has not been willing to participate in talks, despite President Vladimir Putin repeatedly saying that he is open to negotiations.
Putin, however, insists that negotiations should take place in the Russian demands from the 2022 talks, when Ukraine was very close to signing a peace agreement.