German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck has agreed to no longer accused the upstart populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party of being bought by the Kremlin after the party took legal action against him in court.
Habeck, a Green, had levelled the accusations against the BSW, as well as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), during the election campaign in the eastern German state of Saxony in August.
The BSW vehemently opposes German military aid for Ukraine, and has been accused by some critics of echoing Russian propaganda in its rhetoric on the issue.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Habeck said during a speech in Dresden in August that to “allow yourself to be paid for your opinion, to buy votes on the internet, to build up troll armies, to have your opinion bought: That’s disgusting, and it’s not proper, and we know that AfD and BSW are paid the same way.”
The BSW took legal action over the comments. Habeck has now signed the corresponding cease-and-desist declaration, a Green Party spokeswoman said on Monday.
According to the spokeswoman, Habeck had “exaggerated a little too much” at the campaign event.
Sahra Wagenknecht, the founder and namesake of the BSW, posted on X: “Lies have short legs. (…) It’s good that the courts have stopped this spread of fake news.”
According to the Greens, Habeck’s statement referred to questions about funding for the BSW and the fact that the BSW “has not provided the promised transparency as to where the money actually comes from.”
The Greens have urged the BSW to provide more transparency about how the upstart party finances its election campaigns.
During his speech in Dresden, Habeck, the leader of the Greens, said that people are certainly allowed to disagree with the current German government’s stance on supporting Ukraine.
He also acknowledged that the government is not doing everything correctly on the issue.
“But,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted Habeck as saying, “nobody is completely bought – unlike the AfD and BSW.”
He added that everyone knows “that many of them are paid from Moscow and Beijing.”
The Russian government under President Vladimir Putin has long been trying to influence opinion in Germany. However, according to the newspaper, there is no concrete evidence of payments by Russian agencies or intermediaries to the BSW.
This also applies to a group set up by the BSW, the BSW e.V. association, which is not subject to political campaign finance regulations but passes on donations to the party.
Several AfD politicians who are suspected of having received money from Moscow have also denied the allegations.
