A former chief military adviser to the chancellor of Germany has backed a petition signed by more than a quarter of a million Germans calling on the government to broker urgent peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
The initiative, which received 280,000 signatures in the first 48 hours, argues that since the Ukrainians “cannot win a war against the world’s biggest nuclear power”, Berlin should lead an effort to pursue an armistice.
While polls suggest the German public remains broadly supportive of Ukraine, there is also a steadily growing clamour for Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, to help engineer a diplomatic solution.
In the most recent national Deutschlandtrend survey for ARD, a public broadcaster, 58 per cent of the voters said they would like to see
