Sahra Wagenknecht, the leader of the German left-wing nationalist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht party, is demanding a referendum on whether Germany should provide Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles.
The previous left-wing government hesitated to send the missiles to Kyiv, in fear of provoking Russia, but the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz of the centre-right CDU party, wants to follow a more hawkish line. During the election, he campaigned to provide Ukraine with the missiles.
The new government on Monday, May 12th, said it will no longer publicly discuss whether it is to deliver missiles to Ukraine. Germany would continue to support Ukraine with weapons, but would not specify which weapon systems would be delivered or at what point.
The comments angered the opposition parties. Wagenknecht, whose party just missed out on reaching the 5% threshold to enter parliament, demanded a referendum on the issue, calling the government’s decision “impertinent,” and that the public should be informed about such matters, before it suddenly finds itself “waking up to a nuclear war.”
The parliamentary Die Linke, a far-left party that also rejects military involvement in Ukraine, said the Merz government’s decision amounts to a further escalation of the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.
