BERLIN - When 13,000 demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate on Feb. 25 to call for an end to weapons supplies to Ukraine, the protest was led by Sahra Wagenknecht, a member of parliament for Germany's far-left Die Linke party and a firebrand with national ambitions. Wagenknecht decried the prospect that German tanks, soon to be delivered to Ukraine, could once again be used to shoot at "Russian women and men."
"We don't want Germany to be drawn deeper into this war," she said, as she called for the creation of a new peace movement and condemned the bloodshed in Ukraine, without mentioning Russia's invasion.