Radical Left and the Russia-Ukraine War: Comparing KSČM and BSW

Radical Left and the Russia-Ukraine War: Comparing KSČM and BSW The radical left-wing parties (RLP) in Europe display strongly divergent positions regarding the Russia–Ukraine war, ranging from unconditional support for Kyiv to openly pro-Russian or “neutralist” orientations. The latter, in fact, blame NATO's expansion, oppose sanctions and military aid, interpreting the invasion as a defensive reaction against an "Atlanticist empire". This article compares two emblematic cases from Central and Eastern Europe, which are very different from one another: the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), a historic communist party with popular roots, and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, a recent formation centred around the charismatic leadership of Sahra Wagenknecht. The analysis focuses on the dynamics through which radical left-wing actors, traditionally pacifist and anti-imperialist, come to partially overlap with the narrative frames promoted by the Kremlin. This convergence is interpreted as the result of three interconnected mechanisms, rarely analysed together in the scholarly literature: 1) A path-dependent ideological repertoire: in an attempt to reinterpret contemporary international conflicts through frameworks inherited from the Cold War, this vision reduces the complexity of the global system to a binary logic - "Atlantic empire" versus "poles of resistance" - fostering an anti-Atlantic stance and a simplified campism that, in practice, obscures internal tensions; 2) Transnational networks of material support and influence: these networks include foundations and media platforms linked to Russia, such as Voice of Europe, which help to shape political narratives; 3) Electoral incentives linked to domestic crises: factors such as energy costs and post-2022 inflation push parties to ride the popular dissent against NATO and sanctions, seeking to capture protest votes. Empirically, the study is based on the analysis of party official documents, parliamentary speeches, motions and recorded votes between 2022 and 2026. Through process tracing, all the key external events (the invasion of 24 February 2022, the peak of energy inflation in 2022–23, the escalation of the conflict from 2023 to 2026, and peace negotiations in 2025–26) that have influenced party positioning will be examined. Although BSW was formally established in 2024, my analysis includes Sahra Wagenknecht's positions within Die Linke pre-2024, which precipitated the split and BSW formation. This analysis will be complemented by secondary evidence on Russian influence operations in Europe, to reconstruct the causal chains linking electoral survival, material incentives and discursive legitimisation. In this way, the article demonstrates how radical left-wing actors contribute to a broad sovereignist backlash, undermining the emancipatory potential of the European radical left in the post-war context.