German opposition blasts Scholz's comments on peace talks with Putin

Germany's conservative opposition has sharply criticized Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his comments in a major interview on Sunday about pushing harder for a negotiated end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a foreign policy spokesman for the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), said Scholz is falling for Russian propaganda and is continuing to cling to old self-serving German delusions about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He said Scholz's shift has made a "farce" that marks the death of his prominent declaration that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 would mark a turning point for German security policy.

Scholz is trying to market himself as a "peace chancellor" at a deep cost for Germany and its allies, Kieswetter told the Bild newspaper. The chancellor "is making the situation in Ukraine worse and thus weakening European and German security."

But Kiesewetter contended that overtures to Russia fit into a strategy from parts of Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) "to very subtly push Ukraine into a sham peace determined by Russia, in which support is gradually reduced and sham negotiations are called for instead."

Scholz's comments come just under two weeks before his fellow party member and premier of the eastern state of Brandenburg, Dietmar Woidke, faces a tough state election with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on the rise.

The September 22 election follows a pair of state elections three weeks ago in which the AfD made historic gains, coming in as the top party in Thuringia and narrowing tailing the CDU in Saxony - the first time since a far-right party came out on top since the Nazis took power in the 1930s.

In a long interview with public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, Scholz said: "I believe that this is the time to discuss how we can get out of this war and achieve peace more quickly than it currently seems."

Previous peace conferences have excluded Russia, and have backed demands from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky which Putin has ruled out as absolutely unacceptable.

Scholz on Sunday said that there should be further peace talks that bring the Russians to the table.

Zelensky's peace plan calls for the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all areas of Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula.

Russia is also supposed to agree to reparations payments under the Ukrainian plan, as well as turn over Russian politicians and military personnel to an international criminal court.