Ge-Russia is back – Sahra Wagenknecht shocks Germany with her new pro-Russian party, BSW: nostalgia for the good old days when Putin gifted flowers to Merkel is widespread in the country. Germans want to raise their heads and defeat the weakening American influence. With AfD support, the relationship with Moscow could rise from its ashes

After months of speculation, Sahra Wagenknecht announced in Berlin on Monday that she was leaving the Left Party and founding a new party. This is not only a heavy blow for her previous party; Wagenknecht's project is also being watched nervously in the right-wing populist AfD.

The "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance" (BSW) will initially be organised as an association and serve to prepare a party of its own, which is to come into being - with a new name - at the beginning of next year. The politician announced this on Monday. With the new party, she wants to run for the first time in the European elections in 2024. There is a big void in Germany's political system, Wagenknecht justified the move. Many people no longer feel represented by any party. Germany is being governed by the "worst government of all time", Wagenknecht said, and the current situation cannot be allowed to continue.

In terms of content, the politician relies on a crude mixture of social policy, hatred of America and love of Russia. The current federal government is acting "incompetently" and "haphazardly", Wagenknecht ranted on Monday. The "traffic light coalition" are ruining their own country with their economic sanctions against Russia, even provoking a new world war. "We have cut ourselves off from cheap energy with the economic sanctions, without there being any viable alternatives," Wagenknecht said with regard to the refusal of the "traffic light coalition" to continue to rely on Russian energy supplies after Russia's invasion.

The foreign policy of the "traffic light coalition", conducted with a raised forefinger, isolates the country in large parts of the world, Wagenknecht added. It is a big mistake that the German government has completely abandoned the important tradition of détente and is instead playing the military card in Ukraine and Israel.

Wagenknecht also mentioned the climate policy of the "traffic light coalition" as one of the reasons for the refoundation: "We have to get away from blind, haphazard eco-activism, which makes people's lives even more expensive, but actually doesn't help the climate at all." Instead, a new, rational economic policy is needed. Her alliance is also committed to reopening the corridor of opinion in public debate. The way debates are conducted in Germany, the way dissenting opinions are dismissed, is "unworthy of a democracy", Wagenknecht said.