GERMANY
By Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de
Sep 9, 2024
“We have long been calling for peace negotiations involving all warring parties - including Russia,” the AfD’s co-leader Tino Chrupalla wrote on X. “Good that the chancellor is now following our demand.” [Sean Gallup/Getty Images]
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a peace conference with Russia on Sunday, a move the far-right AfD saw as a sign the government was bowing to its pressure.
Russia was not invited to the recent international peace conference on its war of aggression against Ukraine, held in Switzerland in June.
“There will definitely be another peace conference. And the [Ukrainian] President and I agree that it must also be one with Russia,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD/S&D) told public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had agreed on this in confidential talks at the Ukrainian Defence Contact Group meeting in Ramstein last week, Bild reported. After the Swiss summit, Zelenskyy had already called for Russia’s presence at the next conference.
Scholz’s comments come as support for Germany’s military backing of Ukraine has waned in some regions, as he acknowledged. Last week’s regional elections in eastern Germany underlined this, with parties opposed to arms supplies to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia taking almost half of all votes in both states.
Scholz, whose party won less than 10% of the vote in both elections, admitted on Sunday that the “election results also have something to do with some citizens not agreeing with our support for Ukraine.”
Regional election results pose dilemma for Germany’s Ukraine supporters
As the Russia-friendly BSW part has become the new pivotal player in Eastern Germany, the country’s Russia hawks appear poised to make concessions and tone down their rhetoric to form stable governments.
Cheers on the hard left and right
Meanwhile, the far-right AfD, which won a regional election for the first time and came second in another, cheered Scholz’s announcement and linked it to its stance.
“We have long been calling for peace negotiations involving all warring parties – including Russia,” the AfD’s co-leader Tino Chrupalla wrote on X. “Good that the chancellor is now following our demand.”
Scholz was also praised by the newly formed left-wing populist alliance of Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which campaigned on a conciliatory approach to Russia and was rewarded with solid results. It made a commitment to this position a condition for supporting the governments in both states, which are being negotiated between the CDU, BSW and Scholz’s SPD.
The leader of the BSW in the EU Parliament, Fabio de Masi called Scholz’s comments “an important initiative on the way towards a ceasefire.”
The German government had previously argued that “the only party (…) which is not willing to talk (…) are the Russians themselves”, as a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told journalists on Wednesday.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly claimed that he is open to talks -most recently last week– he insists that they build on the unsuccessful 2022 negotiations, which reportedly failed due to unacceptable Russian demands.
Other negotiations have taken place to strike up prisoner swaps and a deal to export Ukrainian grain.
(Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de)
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