2024-08-17 09:23:07
If she takes part in the government in Brandenburg, Sahra Wagenknecht wants to supply the Schwedt refinery with Russian oil again. She sharply criticizes the current embargo.
Sahra Wagenknecht has announced that if she were to join the government in Brandenburg, she would campaign for the resumption of oil imports from Russia. This would enable the PCK refinery in Schwedt to be fully utilized again. The chairwoman of the BSW electoral alliance told the German Press Agency.
Wagenknecht described the adherence to the oil embargo as “stupid politics at the expense of Brandenburg and the entire country”. In her opinion, this policy makes energy unnecessarily expensive and endangers Schwedt as an industrial location. She called for political pressure on the federal government to reverse this decision.
The German government stopped importing Russian oil at the beginning of 2023 after Russia attacked Ukraine. Since then, the refinery in Schwedt has been supplied from other sources. Nevertheless, the plant’s capacity utilization was only 76.2 percent in the first half of 2024, compared to 98.8 percent in 2021.
The SPD’s top candidate and Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke was open to talks with Sahra Wagenknecht’s electoral alliance after the state election on September 22nd. However, he stressed that pragmatism in state politics is more important than ideological debates. “In the state of Brandenburg, decisions are not made on the migration issue or the future of Ukraine,” said Woidke.