Each year, the floats address current political issues in the country and around the world with biting irony.
This year, Ukraine's great president Volodymyr Zelenskiy walked through the streets of Cologne holding a placard that read “To be or NATO be.” President Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to join the Western military alliance.
In Dusseldorf, a float depicting President Trump stabbing a Ukrainian soldier in the back hints at opposition within the Republican Party to aiding Ukraine. In another photo, the former president and 2024 presidential candidate held an American flag cut into the shape of a pair of scissors and a swastika.
In Mainz, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on a pink “Barbie and Ken” car float, and the far-right party “Alternative for Germany”, which criticizes sanctions against Russia and opposes weapons, and the new Sarah Wagenknecht He was behind the co-leader of the alliance. Shipping to Ukraine.
The war between Israel and Hamas was also a theme. A float in Düsseldorf depicted a figure in military uniform labeled “Hamas” pushing what appeared to be a family toward an Israeli tank.
The unpopular German government has lampooned Chancellor Olaf Scholz as a sloth and Foreign Minister Annalena Verbock as a china shop elephant (the German equivalent of a china shop bull).
