Oliver Towfigh Nia
25 February 2023•Update: 26 February 2023
BERLIN
Thousands of people on Saturday gathered at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate, calling for peace negotiations with Russia in the Ukraine war.
Broadcast live on Youtube, left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht and women's rights activist Alice Schwarzer, who organized the rally, called for a cease-fire and peace negotiations with Russia.
Wagenknecht urged for "an end to the bloodshed" in Ukraine on the first anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war.
She also warned of a likely "nuclear inferno," if the Russian war escalates in Ukraine.
With the rally, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer wanted to underpin their demands for dealing with the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Two weeks ago they published a "Manifesto for Peace" in which they called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to "stop the escalation in arms deliveries". Critics had accused Wagenknecht and Schwarzer of being "naive".
Scholz and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck also made it clear that they did not share the conviction. One has to understand "that the Russian President currently only accepts one form of negotiations, namely that someone capitulates unconditionally and he implements all his goals," said Scholz.
On the Internet, however, more than 640,000 people declared their approval of the manifesto by Saturday afternoon.
“Supported by the West, Ukraine can win individual battles. But it cannot win a war against the world’s largest nuclear power,” the authors said in the petition and underlined that “neither side can win militarily” and the war can only end at the negotiating table.
“Negotiating does not mean surrendering. Negotiating means making compromises on both sides with the aim of preventing hundreds of thousands more deaths and worse,” the authors of the manifesto stressed.
