BERLIN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th May, 2021) The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party hopes that the election of a new German chancellor after September's parliamentary polls will mark a turning point in ties with Russia, the party's co-leader Tino Chrupalla told Sputnik.
"We hope the dialogue between the president of Russia and the new head of the German state will not only intensify after the Bundestag election but will, above all, give a positive impetus to the German-Russian relations," he said.
Chrupalla said the AfD hopes to enter the government or improve its standing in this year's election. It emerged as the biggest opposition party in the national parliament in the 2017 polls where it secured 12.6% of the vote and entered the Bundestag for the first time since its creation in 2013.
Commenting on a split in Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing alliance of conservative CDU and CSU parties, Chrupalla said her policy dealt a blow to her Christian Democrats and all of Germany, while a split between the leaders of the two sister parties could cost them both votes.
On eastern Ukraine, he said that finding a peaceful solution to the years-long conflict was the main goal. He argued that Europe had seen too much of hostilities and that a peaceful resolution in eastern Ukraine would be a "common good."
Regarding the German-Russian negotiations on the Sputnik V vaccine supplies, Chrupalla said he welcomed the effort to give Germans a choice between vaccine brands, but he could not say why the talks were relegated to regional authorities, rather than being conducted by the Federal government.
