On February 25, about 13,000 demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate demanding an end to the supply of weapons to Ukraine. The leader of the meeting was Zara WagenknechtMP from the left party Die link.

“We don’t want Germany to go deep into this war,” Wagenknecht said from the stage of the meeting, condemning the bloodshed in Ukraine, but without mentioning Russian invasion.

Among the crowd gathered in Berlin were members of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD), as well as 66-year-old Jurgen Elgesser of the far-right magazine Compact. The magazine in question recently declared on its front page that Zara Wagenknecht would be Germany’s “best chancellor” as a “left and right candidate”.

Political opposition forces, from the extreme left on one side to the extreme right on the other, have been rallying in Berlin under the banner of peace for several months, although the union remains ad hoc and unofficial, according to the Washington Post.

However, this union of the extremes of the German political spectrum is the Kremlin’s goal and has even been discussed by senior officials in Moscow, the Washington Post continues, citing the contents of 2022 Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence agency. which, however, is not named.

Plan

According to what is stated in the said documents, Kremlin officials have asked other strategists in the Russian state apparatus to focus their efforts on Germany, with the ultimate goal of developing an “anti-war movement” that will act as a means of pressure to soften support for Germany, as well as Europe as a whole. towards Ukraine.

According to The Washington Post, a senior Kremlin official, Sergei Kiriyenko, gathered a group of Russians last July and told them that Germany should become the “center” of Moscow’s efforts to undermine European support for Ukraine.

Documents whose details have been confirmed by Western government officials, The Washington Post reports, reveal for the first time Kremlin attempts to directly interfere in German politics, support for far-left and far-right extremist protests against the German government and seeks to create a new political/party coalition that will include Wagenknecht Die Linke, the far left and the far right AfD.

The goal of this new political formation, which Kremlin officials had in mind, was, according to a September 9 document, to obtain “majorities in elections at any level” in Germany.

In the same context, the AfD could transform itself into a “German unity” party by raising its percentage above 13%. This “renewed” AfD can then publicly renounce the West. sanctions which were imposed on Russia because of this war in Ukraine contrary to German interests.

The Russian side has reportedly even gone so far as to write a manifesto that a “renewed” AfD could potentially adopt. In particular, the mentioned manifesto, drawn up by the Russians, states that: “Incompetent politicians, unable to calculate the consequences of their decisions, dragged Germany into conflict with Russia, a natural ally of our country and our people. Our interests require the restoration of normal relations with Russia. Today there are only two parties in Germany: the party of Germany’s enemies and the party of her friends. It is not clear from documents reviewed by the Washington Post whether this manifesto fell into the hands of anyone in the AfD.