Germany’s populist superstar demands peace with Russia

FEW GERMAN politicians divide opinion like Sahra Wagenknecht. A Putin-loving demagogue to her detractors, simply “Sahra” to her legions of adoring fans, Ms Wagenknecht has injected a high-octane blast of populism into a country that prefers its politics staid and consensual. Invariably decked out in her trademark high-necked jackets, Ms Wagenknecht rules the airwaves with her brainy but pointed polemics on Ukraine, immigration and other prickly subjects. Her political formula is unorthodox, yet the success of her Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a party she launched only in January, proves a talent for political entrepreneurship. And she has developed an uncanny knack for forcing other politicians to dance to her tune.

In an interview in her parliamentary office in Berlin, Ms Wagenknecht outlines her political philosophy and her aims. “Without a prominent face, no one knows what young parties stand for,” she says, explaining why she launched a party with her image and under her name (the BSW will eventually be renamed, she says). “It is simply a programme that corresponds to what many people want. On the one hand, social justice. On the other, a conservative politics based on cultural traditions and reduction of migration, and which addresses the question of war and peace.”

What Ms Wagenknecht calls her “left-conservative” politics blends a traditional left-wing menu—higher taxes on the rich, more generous pensions and minimum wage, scepticism towards big business—with a nationalist concern for cultural identity and a healthy dose of woke-bashing. The holder of a doctorate in microeconomics, she strongly backs Germany’s industrial model and its backbone of the Mittelstand, small and medium-sized business she credits with providing ordinary Germans with decent wages and careers. She says Germany’s government, which she has called the “stupidest in Europe”, has hobbled firms by putting sanctions on Russian gas, and she laments the “foolishness” of, for example, climate activists who wish to kill off the combustion engine, the source of so much of Germany’s past prosperity. And she is vocal about the “major problems” of irregular migration, which she says is “overwhelming Germany”.

Front and centre of her offer is Ukraine, or what she calls “peace”. Long steeped in the NATO– and America-bashing of the German hard left where she served her political apprenticeship, Ms Wagenknecht has found in the war an issue that clearly sets her aside from Germany’s pro-Ukraine mainstream. She condemns Vladimir Putin’s invasion, but says it sprang from Russia’s legitimate concerns over NATO expansion. In June, together with the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), BSW MPs boycotted a Bundestag address by Volodomyr Zelensky, whose “uncompromising attitude” she blames in part for the ongoing fighting. There is a market for these views, especially in Germany’s east.

Ms Wagenknecht says she accepts Ukraine’s need for security guarantees in the event of the peace settlement she demands. But her preference would be for them to come from countries like China and Turkey; Ukraine must certainly be denied NATO membership, since Russian concerns over the alliance inspired the war in the first place. As for Germany, “it would have been wiser if we had held on to the old policy” of “mediating between Russia, eastern Europe and the US” rather than sending Ukraine arms and tanks. She has dismissed Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, as a “vassal” of America, which sums up her worldview and helps explain why the German establishment finds her so toxic. (Ms Wagenknecht’s repetition of Putinesque talking-points also earns her frequent appearances in Kremlin propaganda.)

She grew up in communist East Germany, and remained a true believer well after the wall came down. Her political journey took her into The Left (Die Linke), a hard-left outfit in part descended from East Germany’s ruling Communists. As co-leader of the party’s parliamentary group in the 2010s, she became a fixture on the talk-show scene and a well-known author. But her tensions with The Left over immigration and lifestyle issues—she thought the party had been captured by tofu-munching metropolitans—and the growing strength of her personal brand made a break inevitable. Taking nine Left MPs with her, Ms Wagenknecht declared her intention to change “German politics, not for years, but for decades”.

Hers might be the most impressive political debut in German history. The BSW took over 6% of the vote at its first test, elections to the European Parliament in June. Then came votes in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, three states in Germany’s east, where her brand of politics has always been most popular. The BSW’s double-digit results in all three obliged the mainstream Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats to consider forming coalitions with it, given the need to retain a “firewall” around the AfD, which also outperforms in the east. One year ago the BSW did not exist. It is now preparing to take office in three of Germany’s 16 states.

Or is it? Her party’s success forces an unfamiliar question on Ms Wagenknecht: is she ready to accept the compromises of governing? There are reasons to doubt it. For although Ms Wagenknecht counsels compromise on Ukraine, in eastern Germany she plays hardball. She has paused coalition talks in Thuringia because a position paper by the three would-be partners does not formally reject a recent German agreement to host long-range American missiles from 2026—even though states have next to no say in foreign policy. And she has upped the ante by insisting that CDU politicians with whom her colleagues are negotiating in the eastern states distance themselves from Friedrich Merz, their national leader, who wants Germany to deliver more weapons to Ukraine.

For many observers, making outrageous demands over symbolic issues looks like a prelude to blowing up the talks entirely, or forcing others to bow out: some in the Saxony CDU are already getting cold feet about the woman they dismiss as a “neo-Bolshevik”. “The coalition talks are primarily about achieving better living conditions,” says Ms Wagenknecht, mentioning Germany’s “desolate” education system. “Yet the question of war and peace is elementary, because if war comes to Germany, there is no point in thinking about education.” This attitude troubles those of Ms Wagenknecht’s BSW colleagues conducting the coalition talks, which seemed to be going well until head office got involved. But “we won’t join governments in which we would disappoint our voters,” says Ms Wagenknecht. “That would lead to a quick end to our party’s success.”

Sarah Wagner, a BSW-watcher at Queen’s University Belfast, believes that Ms Wagenknecht does not want compromises over state governments to jeopardise her campaign for next year’s federal election, her real priority. “The basis of this party is opposition, and that isn’t going to work if they’re in government,” she says. One insider says the party would be delighted to retain its current polling level of around 9% at that election. That would be enough to turn the BSW into a spoiler, making the business of forming coalitions yet more complicated than it already is, but not enough to move Ms Wagenknecht’s party out of her oppositional comfort zone. Perhaps that is fine with her.