AfD pro-Russia movement
A large part of the right-wing populist and far-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) supports Russia, its foreign policy, and its allies.
[1][2] AfD members and activists were listed as keeping close ties with Russian politicians and receiving financial benefits in an OCCRP investigation of Russia's International Agency for Current Policy.
[3] In 2023 various German media outlets such as Der Spiegel, ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, ZDF Frontal, T-Online, and Correctiv have published findings on the AfD's connections with Russia.
[7] In September 2022, the three state parliament members Christian Blex, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider and Daniel Wald traveled to Russia and also wanted to visit the Russian-occupied Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
[8][9][10] In August 2023 The Insider and Der Spiegel published a joint investigation into actions of Russian citizen Vladimir Sergienko who proxied money and instructions from Russia to AfD politicians, who filed a constitutional complaint in Germany against its supplies of weapons to Ukraine.
Sergienko coordinated a number of other AfD initiatives, such as sending letters to the Pope and drafting an anti-Ukrainian declaration of Harald Weyel in PACE.
[11] The Russian state foreign media agency RT has since 2014 a German speaking outlet, which spread right wing conspiracy theories and several times promoted AfD-politicians and their positions.
RT invites such guests as AfD supporter Ken Jebsen, a journalist who was kicked out of public broadcaster RBB after antisemitic charges had been raised against him.
RT DE was reporting intensively about pro-Russian Berlin Monday demonstrations, which are closely linked to the right-wing populist publicist Jürgen Elsässer, editor-in-chief of Compact.
Specifically, a document sets the goal that the AfD should achieve approval of 20 percent - from a survey institute whose results are published throughout Europe and which is considered trustworthy.
The AfD Politicians Eugen Schmidt, Olga Petersen, Ulrich Oehme founded the “Association for the Prevention of Discrimination and Exclusion of Russian-Germans and Russian-speaking Fellow Citizens in Germany” (Vadar e.V.)
[19] The association attests that Germany has an “anti-Russian mood” and wants to offer legal help to “Russian-Germans and Russian-speaking fellow citizens” who would be discriminated against or excluded by the war of aggression.
[20] The association says it financed the legal representation of pro-Russian influencer Alina Lipp and is opposed to the German ban on the russian military and propaganda symbol Z.
[20] In 2021 Tino Chrupalla (the co-chairman of the AfD) – at the invitation of the Russian Defense Ministry – gave a speech at a conference in which he spoke of the Western Allies' "psychological warfare" right after World War II.
The public broadcaster ZDF, aswell as Spiegel and other media had reported that the Kremlin had specifically supported Frohnmaier to promote Russian interests in the Bundestag.
He delineates himself as a member of the right-wing factional cluster 'Der Flügel' (the wing) around Björn Höcke[34] Under the chairmanship of Robby Schlund, for the first time in years, a German-Russian parliamentary group in 2019 was making efforts to establish better contacts from Germany with Russia.
[35] According to a report by Der Spiegel, Western secret services suspected Sergijenko of influencing the AfD on behalf of the Russian government, and of possibly providing the party or its environment with money.
[36] Sergijenko's contact in Moscow was a man named "Alexei" and in February 2024 journalist investigation of The Insider confirmed the identity of the person to be Ilya Vechtomov, officer of 5th Service of FSB.
[40][41] In August 2023 Martin Kühne, an AfD councillor of Baden-Baden, was charged by prosecutor of defacing two cars with Ukrainian number plates by painting large swastika and "fuck UA" text on them.
