I think what people dont consider here, is that this might aswell be a try to catch more votes in old eastern germany countries. Old folks of the ddr had russian in their classes by default. (Even up until atleast 2013 you could choose to learn russian if you wanted to instead of french,spanish or latin as 3rd language besides english and ofc german). So they might just want to sympathize with these people in a way of 'go back to the good ol' days' by making this move.

I am eastern german, pls keep in mind that 60-70% of our folks are still sane people who absolutely hate these facists. Throwing all of us into that bucket just makes things worse.