Three months before elections, Germany's embattled Olaf Scholz kicked off the campaign Saturday by attacking his conservative rival as cold towards the poor but a hothead who would play "Russian roulette" with Moscow.

Weeks after his three-way coalition collapsed in acrimony, and lagging behind in the polls, the Social Democrat Scholz vowed to defeat the current frontrunner Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democrats (CDU).

"Some have already written us off," Scholz told his SPD party faithful, before pledging a similar comeback at the February 23 vote to one that led him to victory three years ago when he took over from Angela Merkel.

Merz, for his part, launched a withering attack on Scholz's failed alliance with the Greens and Free Democrats, accusing it of having driven Europe's biggest economy to the wall through ineptitude and over-regulation.

He slammed the "messed up and wrongheaded" policies that were leading the economy into its second year of downturn, with many big companies shedding jobs.

Merz, a millionaire and former investment fund board member, said that only strong and prosperous........

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