(Bloomberg) -- A new German far-left party that opposes weapons deliveries to Ukraine is aiming to profit from growing discontent with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his government and could shake up the political landscape in four elections this year in Europe’s biggest economy.

“Our democracy is threatened by policies which alienate a growing a number of people,” founder and co-leader Sahra Wagenknecht told reporters Monday at a news conference in Berlin marking the official launch of her eponymous alliance.

The 54-year-old is a former member of the Left party, or Linke, which partly traces its roots to East Germany’s communists. She recently quit the group in order to found the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, or BSW, which combines strident criticism of the government’s climate and vaccine strategies with anti-immigration and pro-Russia rhetoric.

The new party’s establishment could prove significant as it is also likely to woo some voters away from the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

The BSW plans to field candidates in the European Parliament election on June 9, as well as in three regional votes in eastern Germany in the fall, Wagenknecht, who is married to former German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine, told reporters. It will present a full program for the next federal election due in 2025, she added.

The AfD is leading on around 30% of the vote in opinion polls in the three eastern states — Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia — with votes in the fall and has surged into second place nationally behind the main opposition conservative alliance.

Among AfD voters, 29% said they could contemplate backing Wagenknecht’s movement, compared with 55% of Left voters, according to a September YouGov poll. At 29%, potential support for her is higher in eastern Germany than in the west, where it’s at 19%, the poll showed.

Ex-Left politician Fabio De Masi and Thomas Geisel, a former mayor of Dusseldorf who previously belonged to Scholz’s Social Democrats, have been selected as the new party’s lead candidates for the June European election.

--With assistance from Chris Reiter.

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