This is CBSI on the World. I'm John Batchel.

Anato Levin is here, and I ask his help to understand Germany,

because the election underway right now puts Olaf Schultz's social Democrats

leading the coalition that is now ended against the Christian

Democratic Union called CDU, Angela Merkel's Party, now led by a very prominent attorney and

longtime Politico watcher Friedrich Merrittz, who within these last days has remarked that he's

ready to build a coalition with alternative for

Deutschland, AFD. In addition, there were remarks by another minor party, a woman by

name of Sarah Wagner-Connect, she's a party in one, saying that if she's a member of the

Bundestag, which is very likely, given how she's polling,

she'll refuse to continue the war.

AFD is clearly anti-war, based upon, chiefly, the strength in East Germany,

but also just because it's make Germany great again all the time.

Anatole, are you surprised or not about Friedrich Merritt suddenly coming to the

revelation that he can build a coalition based on AFD, polling second in the pre-election polls?

I was surprised it came so soon. I have been expecting this to come at some point for a long time,

simply because, you know, as AFD, like other right-wing parties in Europe, rises and rises in the polls.

Sooner or later, it becomes impossible to form a government without them.

But I, like most analysts, have been thinking that what you would get after these elections

would be a grand coalition between the Christian Democrats and the social Democrats.

Now, of course, that may still happen.

But what really has happened is that largely as a response to various, you know, notorious murders,

...