fact finder
Status: 02/14/2023 1:32 pm
Sahra Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer started a petition in favor of peace talks. Experts say that Russia is not interested in this at all.
By Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow, ARD Fact Finder Editors
“Manifesto for Peace” – that’s the name of a petition launched on Friday by Left Party politician Sahra Wagenknecht and journalist Alice Schwarzer, which is sparking ongoing discussions. In it, they call on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to “stop the escalation of arms deliveries”. Instead, he was to “place himself at the head of a strong alliance for a ceasefire and peace talks at both the German and European levels”. Because at the latest when the Ukrainian armed forces attack Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin “will launch a maximum counterattack.”
NDR Logo Pascal Siggelkow
The petition has more than 360,000 supporters so far, including some prominent names like theologian Margot Käßmann, actress Jutta Speidel and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s military policy adviser Erich Vad. A rally is planned for February 25th in Berlin.
Petition rests on fallacy
With its statements, the petition suggests that the best way to help Ukraine is to stop arms exports and advocate for peace talks.
This is a fallacy, says Michael Zinkanell, future director of the Austria Institute for European and Security Policy (AIES). Because it is not arms deliveries that continue the war, but Russia, which attacked Ukraine. “Russia can end the war at any time – an option that Ukraine, as a defending country, does not have.”
Support from the West is what has made Ukraine so successful in defending against Russian attackers, says Zinkanell. With the cessation of arms deliveries and the reduction of Ukraine’s defense capabilities as a result, it is possible that Russia will return to the original objective of the war, the conquest of Kiev. “Probably nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainian people. However, there are currently no signs that Russia is interested in negotiations.”
Weapon deliveries and trades are not mutually exclusive.
Julia Smirnova, senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Germany (ISD), agrees. The authors would present a complex security policy situation in a distorted and simplified way. “They ignore the fact that Russia is primarily responsible for the war and the suffering of the people of Ukraine.”
According to Smirnova, arms deliveries and preparations for future negotiations are not mutually exclusive. By contrasting military aid to Ukraine with possible peace talks, the petition plays into the hands of Russian propaganda.
It is about undermining support for Ukraine in the West. Western sanctions against Russia, as well as arms deliveries to Ukraine, would be presented as a risk to the German population. “These narratives relate to pacifist attitudes and play on the population’s fear of an economic crisis or nuclear war,” says Smirnova. However, a Eurobarometer poll shows “that 74% of the EU population approves of EU support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion”.
Russia’s Credibility in Doubt
Russia would first have to make some sort of concession to prove its own credibility, says Zinkanell. After all, the Kremlin has given him no reason to trust him in the past. “Before the invasion, Russia claimed that it was not planning an attack,” Zinkanell said. “The fire pauses announced throughout the war, such as the most recent one in early January, have also not been adhered to”. Furthermore, Russian atrocities in the occupied Ukrainian territories showed that an end to hostilities would not automatically mean peace for the Ukrainian population.
Zinkanell considers the scenario of German ground troops in Ukraine suggested in the petition to be almost impossible. The petition reads: “The German Chancellor still guarantees that he doesn’t want to send fighter jets or ‘ground troops’. But how many ‘red lines’ have been crossed in recent months?”
Only in the case of a UN mandate in the course of a peacekeeping mission could Europe send troops into the war zone – however, Russia’s approval in the Security Council would be required in this case, which would be unthinkable under the current circumstances, Zinkanell said.
Nuclear threats as a Russian strategy
By suggesting that a Russian nuclear strike is inevitable if the West continues to cross “red lines” and support Ukraine, the authors reiterate and legitimize Russian threats to use nuclear weapons, says Sara Bundtzen, research and policy analyst at ISD.
The manifesto reads: “It is to be feared that Putin will launch a maximum counterattack if Crimea is attacked at the latest. Shall we then slide inexorably into world war and nuclear war?”
“Nuclear threats are part of Russia’s deterrence policy and have been used strategically by the Russian leadership since the beginning of the war to stoke fear and prevent the West from supporting Ukraine’s right of self-defence,” says Bundtzen. In this context, the authors would resume the Russian narrative of a supposed imminent world war.
Western-backed talks more likely
Overall, the petition hides numerous facts. “In particular, the fact that Russia has consistently escalated the war in recent months with attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the declared annexation of Ukrainian territories and the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops,” explains Bundtzen.
According to Zinkanell, Western support, contrary to the petition, might even make peace talks more likely one day. The past has shown that negotiations are often just an option for warring parties when the prospect of military success is slim. This, in turn, can only be achieved if Ukraine continues to successfully confront Russia.
Russia shows no interest in talks
The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, also contradicted the petition’s request: whether talks take place between the two countries depends on Russia and Putin – not, as suggested in the petition, on Ukraine’s armed resistance. “We don’t have any signs that Russia is in any way interested in achieving peace,” Makeiev said. Instead, the country’s political leadership wants “Ukraine to no longer exist as a country”.
Radio presenter Sergej Mardan said on Russian state television: “There is only one peace formula for Ukraine. The annihilation of Ukraine as a state!”
ARD Russia correspondent Ina Ruck writes on Twitter that statements like these are made countless times in Russia. In Germany, on the other hand, completely different pictures of Russia are drawn on talk shows.
Political scientist Johannes Varwick, who first signed the petition, said on talk shows that Russia was sitting in the corner, that “kicking again” was the wrong approach – and that Ukraine was “done anyway”.
right wing support
Many actors in the ideological right-wing and conspiracy milieu share pro-Russian positions with Wagenknecht and Schwarzer. Well-known pro-Russian disinformation channels and Russian state broadcaster RT share the petition and call for a demonstration. AfD co-president Tino Chrupalla also promoted the petition on Twitter, as did the right-wing extremist magazine “Compact”.
Its editor-in-chief, Jürgen Elsässer, likes the call “extremely”: it’s good that “the two women really got it right”, because the government is driving the “lemmings” to the abyss, as he says in a video. Many of the early signatories are known and important minds have been brought together. However, according to Elsässer, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer “did not include anything that smacked of patriotism in the list of early signatories”.
Wagenknecht appears to dislike far-right support and tells SPIEGEL: “By selecting our first signatories, we make it clear who we work with and who we expect support from – and who we don’t.”
The second Schwarzer initiative
In the past, Wagenknecht has repeatedly made pro-Kremlin statements. In a speech to the Bundestag, she accused the federal government of “starting an economic war” against Russia and called for an end to sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine. In a tweet, she wrote that the Greens are no longer interested in climate protection, having a “crazy war against Russia” as their priority.
Schwarzer’s views on the war in Ukraine were also hotly debated. In April 2022, she and 27 other celebrities wrote an open letter to Chancellor Scholz, in which they warned of a third world war and urged Scholz not to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons “neither directly nor indirectly”.