Thuringia SPD leader Maier criticizes statement on war in Ukraine

Berlin. SPD leader and Thuringian Interior Minister Georg Maier has accused BSW leader Sahra Wagenknecht of blackmail for making coalitions conditional on refraining from further support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. “There is no foreign policy in the state governments,” he told the editorial network Germany (RND). “The topic is a diversionary tactic for missing state issues. There is nothing behind it other than headlines.”

Maier added: “No serious party in the federal government will allow itself to be blackmailed by Sahra Wagenknecht into stopping support for a democratic country that was brutally attacked by Russia.” Wagenknecht does not know that at all about Thuringia, but, as always, about yourself.”

State chairwoman of the BSW, Katja Wolf, ‘is increasingly degenerating into Wagenknecht’s puppet’, according to the SPD politician. “The BSW is a party without members that seems to be led autocratically from above. A stable state government needs a strong SPD, which has shown in various constellations over the past fifteen years that it can be trusted.”

Ramelow criticizes populism

Wagenknecht had said: “We will only participate in a state government that also takes a clear national political position in favor of diplomacy and against war preparations.” Parties such as the SPD, but also the CDU, are open to cooperation – arguing that the state governments do not choose to support Ukraine. Wagenknecht thwarted this reasoning.

Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow told the RND: “The Thuringian CDU is fighting against an imaginary barbecue ban and calls the state elections a stop sign for traffic lights. The potential Thuringian CDU dream partner, the BSW, would even like to stop the Ukraine war here in Thuringia.” Ramelow continued, although he would welcome any initiative to achieve lasting peace in Ukraine. Unfortunately, the state election goals printed on the posters by the CDU and BSW “unfortunately have less and less to do with state politics. This is a dilemma because it normalizes populism.”

Election law warns CDU against forming coalition with BSW

According to Wagenknecht’s coalition terms, foreign CDU politician Roderich Kiesewetter called on his party not to cooperate with the BSW in the federal states either. “Mrs. Wagenknecht makes it clear that the BSW aims to integrate Russian interests into German politics. One of these Russian interests is to undermine the free democratic basic order and to divide democratic parties such as the CDU, shrink them and make them meaningless,” Kiesewetter told the RND. “It must be clear to us as the CDU that cooperation at any level with this offshoot of the Kremlin is unthinkable.”

BSW contradicts all the values ​​“that the CDU has embodied since Adenauer with its ties to the West and its clear position on peace in freedom and democracy,” Kiesewetter warned. “It is the task of the states that are party to recognize this strategy of the BSW and the AfD, to explain it clearly and to give the citizens in the states orientation through a clear position.”