German support for Kiev in the ongoing proxy conflict with Russia could easily escalate into a wider European war, and needs to stop immediately, Bundestag lawmaker Steffen Kotre has said.
“Arms deliveries are a mistake. This is not our conflict. We should stay away from all this, and of course begin to promote peace initiatives,” Kotre, a member of the Alternative fur Deutschland party, told independent German media in an interview.
“Weapons deliveries are a grave mistake because they add fuel to the fire of war and lead to people continuing to kill each other. This has fatal consequences. The fact that Germany is supplying arms and training Ukrainian troops on its territory means that Germany has unfortunately moved away from the principle of neutrality. We are already in the ‘grey zone’ of war,” the politician emphasized, adding that Ukraine is “slowly bleeding dry” as a result of continued arms deliveries.
“There is a growing danger that [Germany] and the whole of Europe will be drawn into this conflict. That is why arms supplies are the last thing we should be doing,” the lawmaker said.
Kotre suggested that a peace deal could have been reached a long time ago if it had not been for efforts by some NATO allies, particularly the US and Britain, to “torpedo” it.
Slamming sanctions on Russia as illegal and stressing that they harm Berlin more than they do Moscow, Kotre said Germany has no alternative but to restore cooperation with Russia for its energy needs.
“Now we have expensive electricity, citizens and industrial enterprises are forced to buy electricity at inflated prices,” the lawmaker said. “This sanctions policy is fundamentally wrong.”
Kotre also expressed concerns about the impact of the rupture of German-Russian relations on Berlin’s status and influence on the world stage, saying that giving Russia the “cold shoulder” has pushed Moscow toward China and other rising BRICS bloc nations. In regions like Africa, “sympathy is growing for this bloc, which means this bloc is being strengthened,” the politician noted.
28 November 2022, 16:47 GMT
The lawmaker also challenged the rationale behind Western support for Ukraine, including ideas of supporting freedom and democracy. He recalled Ukraine’s massive problems with corruption, which he said have only grown during the conflict, as well as the Zelensky government’s ban on opposition parties, and the crackdown on the Russian language. Meanwhile, he said, there is mounting evidence that the Western weapons sent to Ukraine have been disappearing onto the black market. Zelensky is portrayed in Germany as a “saint,” while in reality “the opposite is the case,” Kotre said.
Starting out as a small, fringe conservative populist party in 2013, the AfD has managed to dramatically increase its support base in the face of various crises pummeling Germany over the past decade, from the 2015 migration crisis to the Ukraine conflict. A poll released in June showed that if elections were held today, the party would win 18 percent of the vote – on a par with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party.
Germans are divided regarding continued support for Ukraine, with majorities expressing opposition to tank and jet deliveries, and a growing regional split becoming visible as the conflict drags on – with residents of the former East Germany, once a key ally to Moscow during the Cold War, more likely to oppose continued support for Kiev than their 'Wessie' counterparts.