The BSW calls for more diplomacy with Russia in the Ukraine conflict. Now politicians from Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia are also joining the demand.
After the elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, three leading politicians from these countries are urging the federal government to make greater efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the Russia-Ukraine war. “The federal government must assume its foreign policy responsibility more actively through more visible diplomacy,” write the Prime Ministers of Brandenburg and Saxony, Dietmar Woidke (SPD) and Michael Kretschmer (CDU), as well as Thuringia’s CDU state leader Mario Voigt in a joint guest article for the “Frankfurter General Newspaper”. “In order to bring Russia to the negotiating table, a strong and unified alliance is needed. Germany and the EU have still pursued this path too indecisively.”
All three politicians are in talks with the BSW about the possible formation of state governments. BSW boss Sahra Wagenknecht had made it a condition of government participation that future state governments would have to speak out against military aid to Ukraine and the stationing of US medium-range missiles in Germany. However, the federal states do not have decision-making authority on these issues.
BSW is needed to form a government
The three politicians are now trying to find a middle path. On the one hand, they emphasize that the aim must be to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine and to offer the country “reliable security guarantees”. At the same time, they emphasize that Germany is an inviolable part of the European Union, the Common European Security and Defense Policy, a member of NATO and the OSCE.
Woidke, Kretschmer and Voigt also emphasize that the country must become more defensible. “As was the case during the Cold War, it can only be done from a strong position.” Regarding the plans for stationing US medium-range missiles in the western federal states, it just shows that they should have been “explained better and discussed more broadly.” Military strength only makes sense if it is combined with clever diplomacy.
The background to the balancing act is that after the state elections in the three federal states, beyond the rejected cooperation with the AfD, there is only the possibility of forming governments with the BSW. A number of CDU politicians had warned against abandoning the Union’s foreign policy positions.
Source: Stern
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