From the Morning Star, 29/8/22
GERMANY’S current coalition is “the worst post-war government we’ve had” and is fanning the flames of the Ukraine war rather than seeking to end it, a Die Linke MP told the Morning Star at the Unsere Zeit Press Festival in Berlin at the weekend.
Sevim Dagdelen, a Bundestag member for North Rhine-Westphalia, said ditching Berlin’s longstanding ban on sending weapons into war zones would have dangerous long-term consequences.
And she slammed Western politicians egging Kiev to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian” while not lifting a finger to seek a negotiated peace.
Boris Johnson had “sabotaged” negotiations back in March, telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Nato powers would help him win the war outright, while German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock “is supposed to be the country’s top diplomat but has refused even to engage in diplomacy.
“They don’t fight. They don’t get killed,” she stormed. “It’s Ukrainians who are getting killed in what has become a Nato-Russia war fought via Ukraine.”
Ms Dagdelen said it was “a disgrace” that 80 years after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, “German weapons are again being deployed against Russia … it’s a disaster.”
The MP, who presides over the German-Turkish group in the Bundestag, said that the militarisation of Europe and Russia’s long-term embroilment in Ukraine served US interests in allowing it to focus its resources on its main rival, China.
The war had also scuppered an emerging Eurasian trading network stretching from China to Germany, she added.
The theme of the two-day festival, organised each summer by German communist weekly Unsere Zeit, was Peace and Solidarity.
Guests from around the world joined crowds for a peace rally on Saturday afternoon, where speakers emphasised the role Nato expansion had played in bringing war back to Europe and called for a renewed international movement to end the conflict.
benchacko@peoples-press.com
Labour Affairs 