The Alternative Against Germany
How the AfD Became the Long Arm of Russia and China
The far-right AfD presents itself as a patriotic party, but revelations about possible monetary payments from Russia and a suspected Chinese spy have exposed its members as traitors to their country. DER SPIEGEL has learned that the Kremlin even drafted a "manifesto" for the party.
By Maik Baumgärtner, Markus Becker, Jörg Diehl, Martin Knobbe, Timo Lehmann, Ann-Katrin Müller, Sven Röbel, Marcel Rosenbach, Fidelius Schmid, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt und Steffen Winter
When it comes to the oppressed in Tibet, Maximillian Krah, a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Saxony, can sometimes get carried away with himself.
Like in the video he posted on YouTube in May 2021on the 70th anniversary of the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
In the video, the AfD politician, who holds a seat in the European Parliament, can be seen standing on a lush green meadow, the sun blazing above him.
Krah is wearing a dark suit with a red tie, and at the start of the video, his left hand is tucked into his trouser pocket.
He praises the actions of the Chinese regime in Tibet as if he were extolling the virtues of a new package tour.
In Tibet, monks are protected by the state, Krah intones, and new temples are being built thanks to support from Beijing and Shanghai.
The laughter of the little ones can be heard in the daycare centers, he says.
He neglects to devote even a single word to the brutal oppression of Tibet at the hands of China.
At the end, Krah addresses the Tibetans directly.
"Enjoy your anniversary," he says.
"And you can be certain: You have friends all over the world."
One could be forgiven for mistaking it for B-roll satire, but the AfD politician from Dresden was apparently serious.
The video is no longer available on the platform today.
A Suspected Spy at the Heart of Europe's Power Center
Even back then, three years ago, it was clear to many in the far-right AfD that Krah had an unusually amicable relationship with autocratic systems.
At the beginning of last week, the reasons for this seem to have become clearer.
Germany's federal prosecutor general ordered the arrest of a close associate of Krah's for allegedly passing internal information from the European Parliament to a Chinese intelligence agency.
A suspected spy in the political heart of the European Union, made possible by a party that likes to call itself patriotic?
The damage to the AfD is immense, especially given the arrest is just one particularly serious episode in a long series of scandals.
Police with Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, Maximillian Krah, the AfD member of the European Parliament. [M] Lea Rossa / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: xcitepress.com / action press; Fabrizio Bensch / REUTERSMonths ago, DER SPIEGEL exposed the secret connections of a man who had worked for AfD members of parliament for years to the Moscow power apparatus.
Then, a few weeks ago, the Czech government announced that it had uncovered a Russian influence operation.
Several European intelligence services had helped to unmask the Russian plan.
They say that the media portal Voice of Europe had been used by Russia to spread propaganda in 16 languages.
Money also reportedly flowed through the company to European politicians with right-wing extremist parties.
And the names of two German politicians soon emerged: Maximilian Krah and Petr Bystron, numbers one and two on the AfD list for the upcoming European Parliament elections.
Reporting by DER SPIEGEL has found that Voice of Europe appears to be but a small part of a large-scale Russian operation in which the AfD plays a central role.
The Kremlin has given detailed thought to the future of the AfD.
At a Russian Presidential Administration strategy meeting a year and a half ago, scenarios were drawn up for the German right-wing extremist party. DER SPIEGEL is in possession of a "manifesto" drawn up by the Russians with theses on German domestic policy.
The reporting shows how important the AfD is for the hybrid warfare Russia has directed against the West.
And also how compliant the party appears to be in submitting to the dictum from Moscow.
Alleged monetary payments from Russia, suspected agents for Russia and China in the offices of members of parliament and strategy recommendations from the Kremlin: The AfD is clearly far more deeply mired in the autocratic swamp than previously suspected.
Even as it has become a key element of the AfD brand to accuse the hated "system parties" of betraying German interests, it now appears that the party has been describing itself the whole time.
The Alternative for Germany is looking more and more like an alternative against Germany, elements of which are seemingly infiltrated and controlled by the world's two most powerful autocracies.
Friends Called him "Champers Max"
One person who cultivates proximity to both powers is the AfD's lead candidate in the European elections: Maximilian Krah. International security authorities suspected early on that the Chinese national, Jian G., employed in Krah's parliamentary office in Brussels, was connected to the state apparatus of China.
The rumor had also been making the rounds among other members of the European Parliament.
When DER SPIEGEL confronted Krah about those suspicions last December, he brusquely denied them.
It's not possible to say when, exactly, Krah himself developed sympathies for autocratic systems.
But he has shown an affinity for money and prestige from a very early age.
Krah comes from a middle-class background.
His mother was a special education teacher in East Germany and his father was an engineer who then started working at the Interior Ministry of the eastern state of Saxony starting in 1990.
Krah graduated from high school in Dresden, studied law at university and obtained his doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden.
Subsequent stops at London Business School and Columbia Business School in New York served as Krah's entry into the world of the rich, beautiful and supposedly important.
The tuition fees alone must have amounted to well over $100,000, plus the flights to London and the United States.
When asked, Krah said he paid for it all out of savings originally intended for a real estate purchase.
The topic of money was at the heart of some of the assignments that Krah accepted as a young lawyer.
For example, he managed a multimillion-euro inheritance that went to the arch-Catholic Pius Brotherhood.
He also represented them as a lawyer in court in other matters.
For the Pius Brothers' assets, he set up a discreet network including a foundation in Austria and companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
His goal was likely for his clients to pay as little tax as possible on the money.
According to his own statements, he received an hourly fee of 300 euros for his services.
To the outside world, Krah plays the dandy.
He wears shirts monogrammed with his initials and cufflinks.
He knows which wines are expensive and which restaurants are good, as evidenced by his posts on social networks.
Friends and foes alike call him "Champers Max."
He now has eight children with three wives.
Confidents describe him as someone who is always looking to see how he can profit from a situation.
Which may also be the reason he switched from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to the AfD in 2016.
The Christian Democrats back then didn't want to field him as a candidate for the German federal parliament, so he bolted, switching to a party that still gives him a lot of freedom today.
Not just for ethnic theories according to which, for example, "corruption and culture correlate with ethnicity."
In the AfD, Krah has been allowed to live out his affection for China uninhibitedly; and in the European Parliament, he became a loyal lobbyist for the interests of the communist leadership in Beijing – under the benevolent watch of AfD party leader Alice Weidel, who herself traveled with a delegation to China in 2023, where she worked for several years and wrote her doctoral thesis on the Chinese pension system.
The Chinese Embassy in Berlin, AfD head Alice Weidel. [M] Lea Rossa / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: Michael Kuenne / Presscov / ZUMA Press / picture alliance; Jutta Prechtel / ddpAnother example of Krah's handwork came in December 2019, when he sent a letter to party colleagues in Berlin that sounded a lot like a PR brochure for China and its state-owned telecommunications company Huawei.
Whereas numerous politicians in Germany, including many in the AfD, wanted to ban Chinese technology from the mobile network out of concern that data and information could be leaked to the Chinese leadership, Krah advocated its purchase.
He wrote that Chinese technology is "superior" to the competition and that security concerns were based entirely on a "general mistrust of China."
He said it was important to him to "quickly reduce the anti-Chinese position (of his party group in parliament)."
A few weeks before his comments, Krah had traveled to China, perhaps a mere coincidence.
He visited the city administrations in Zhenjiang, Taizhou and Lishui, as well as a Huawei research center in Beijing. The Chinese covered some of the costs of his trip.
It is not against the European Parliament's Code of Conduct to have a trip partially paid for.
Nevertheless, the trip raises questions as to why Krah didn't bear the entire costs himself, especially when he inserted himself into a political debate on behalf of his hosts.
It is still unclear who was part of the "public delegation" with which Krah claims to have traveled to China.
The administration of the European Parliament is unaware of any such trip, according to a spokesperson.
Krah was accompanied by his assistant Jian G., the man arrested last Monday and who is now in custody on suspicion of espionage.
Krah didn't hesitate to requite the Chinese invitation as quickly as possible.
In China's Economic Daily, he compared the speed of construction of the Beijing-Daxing Airport with that of the Berlin airport, which experienced years of delays before its completion.
"This shows me the strength of China and also makes me realize the shortcomings of Germany,” Krah told the newspaper.
His love of China fits in well with the deep aversion he now harbors towards the United States.
If Europe wants to avoid becoming a "vassal of the Americans," then it must "strive for good relations with China," Krah once said in an interview.
The AfD politician from Dresden also made no secret of which side he was on in the European Parliament.
When DER SPIEGEL and other media published secret documents proving that China was imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Krah voted against a resolution in the European Parliament condemning the acts.
He stated that he didn't see any serious "attacks on humanity."
Then he argued that China's government has merely decided to forcibly educate those parts of the population "that are Muslim, on the one hand, and uneducated on the other."
On the platform X (at the time still known as Twitter), he described reports about detention camps for Uyghurs as "scaremongering" and "anti-China propaganda."
AfD politician Maximillian Krah, Asia traveler G. (pixelated) with the Dalai Lama. [M] DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: OHHDL; Ronald Wittek / EPA (2)The support for Beijing was apparently so important to Krah that he even opposed his own parliamentary group in a vote on the Uyghur issue in European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade.
When it came to EU-China cooperation on designation of origin for goods, Krah was the only member of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, in which Europe’s nationalist, far-right and right-wing populist parties have joined forces in the European Parliament, to vote against it.
His reasoning: The "alleged exploitation and internment of Uyghurs," he argued, had nothing to do with trade issues.
Even when the new EU-China strategy was under discussion in June 2021, in which Beijing was called upon to comply with human rights and environmental protection standards, among other things, Krah was the only one of four ID members of the European Parliament who did not vote in favor.
And whereas many Western politicians stayed away from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in protest over the human rights situation, Krah had no scruples.
He was more than happy to make the trip.
China Is Specifically Targeting Members of Extreme Right-Wing Parties in Europe
Krah's unmistakable affinity to China has long been viewed by many fellow party members with skepticism.
Nevertheless, they once again made him their lead candidate for elections for European Parliament this June.
Krah isn't the only advocate for China in his party.
In spring 2021, Stefan Keuter, an AfD member of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, submitted a formal query to the government about the earlier unrest in Hong Kong and an alleged wave of violent activists from the democracy movement there coming into Germany – a spin entirely in the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party and one without any basis in fact.
Secret chats leaked to DER SPIEGEL last year shed new light on the strange move.
There is much to suggest that Keuter's query was part of a larger influence operation by a foreign power.
The treasonous chats prove that China is specifically targeting members of extreme right-wing parties in Europe and paying them to obtain information and to plan smear campaigns.
In hundreds of messages, a Chinese state security agent named "Daniel Woo" exchanged information with a far-right Belgian politician, to whom he apparently gave commissions in exchange for money and luxury trips.
The AfD made six appearances in the treasonous chats.
At one point, the spy boasted about the long arm of Chinese state security reaching into the German Bundestag.
"Last year, we put pressure on the German government," the agent wrote, sending a link on the Bundestag website of the query Keuter had submitted.
Could something similar be done in Belgium, the agent wanted to know?
Security sources believe that the AfD's query was actually set in motion by the Chinese agent Woo through an intermediary.
When contacted for comment, AfD politician Keuter said accusation against him was "not credible." He said he was only doing his job as a politician working in foreign policy and that he did not receive any money for submitting the query.
[M] Lea Rossa / DER SPIEGEL; Foto: Janette Kim Photography / Getty ImagesChina isn't the only authoritarian system that seems to fascinate Maximilian Krah, Keuter's fellow party member from Dresden.
He is also extremely close to Russia, just like his party colleague Petr Bystron, who has been a member of German parliament since 2017.
Krah and Bystron play leading roles in another AfD scandal surrounding the Voice of Europe platform.
The man behind it all: Viktor Medvedchuk, a former Ukrainian oligarch and ex-head of a pro-Russian opposition party in parliament in Kyiv who is now a close confidant of the Russian president in Moscow.
Vladimir Putin is the godfather of his youngest daughter.
In autumn 2021, just a few months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Krah and Bystron traveled to Kyiv to meet with Medvedchuk, who was under house arrest on suspicion of treason.
Krah posted a photo of the visit on Facebook and wrote that they were on a "solidarity visit to the country's most famous political prisoner."
Medvedchuk finally arrived in Russia via a prisoner exchange in September 2022 and was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship.
Since then, he has apparently been providing active support to his friend Putin in the hybrid war against the West.
He had the Voice of Europe set up in the Czech capital Prague.
The purported mouthpiece of Europe primarily provided a voice to right-wing populist and far-right politicians in the EU.
Krah and Bystron were also among those interviewed by the platform.
That in itself would be questionable enough.
But the Russian influence operation, which was made public by the Czech government at the end of March, apparently went much further.
Money is said to have flowed covertly to pro-Kremlin politicians in Europe through the media company controlled by Medvedchuk.
The sum in question is between 500,000 and 1 million euros.
Complaints About the Denominations of Cash
One of the men thought to have received money is Bundestag member Bystron.
The Czech intelligence service BIS intercepted conversations that point to such a conclusion.
One of the Czech members of parliament to whom the tapes were played in a secret session said that the rustling of banknotes can be heard in one of the recordings.
In addition, according to DER SPIEGEL reporting, Bystron, who was born in Olomouc in the Czech Republic, apparently complained to a confidant of Medvedchuk about the denominations of the cash.
He said that some of the money would be difficult to get rid of in Germany because the denominations were such that he would not be able to use it at most gas stations or stores.
Further evidence of money transfers was provided by undercover video recordings in which Bystron is said to have accepted small packages from the contact.
The intelligence services suspect that the AfD politician may have received a total of 20,000 euros.
Bystron denied the accusations and spoke of a "campaign run by NATO."
But when he was questioned last Monday by the AfD's federal executive committee, he apparently admitted to having accepted small parcels.
They did not, he apparently said, contain money – but Bystron didn’t say what they actually contained.
When asked by DER SPIEGEL, Bystron did not deny the incident.
He merely wrote that "the campaign" was being "kept alive until the election by media such as DER SPIEGEL."
He said he suspects that the video and audio recordings have "already been made available to several people."
He also said it "is to be expected that they will be published."
It was the first time that Bystron confirmed his belief that he was secretly filmed and wiretapped.
The FBI Questioned Krah in New York
An additional enigmatic figure also plays a role in the affair: Oleg Voloshyn, who once held a seat in the Ukrainian parliament with Medvedchuk's pro-Russia party.
When the party was banned in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Voloshyn left the country, apparently heading for Belarus.
Ukrainian prosecutors indicted him for high treason in absentia.
Unsurprisingly, AfD politician Krah knows him as well. Voloshyn refers to the German lawmaker as an "old friend."
There is a photo showing them together at an opera ball at the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic in summer 2019.
Krah is wearing a white dinner jacket and holding up a flute of champagne for the camera.
One-and-a-half years later, the AfD politician visited Voloshyn in Kyiv for his birthday.
"Happy birthday, dear Oleg!" he posted on Instagram.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S. has also taken an interest in Krah’s relationship with his dear friend Oleg.
In December, Krah flew to the U.S. to attend a Republican event where presidential candidate Donald Trump made an appearance.
Photos show the AfD politician in a tuxedo, pocket square and bowtie.
The FBI took advantage of Krah's visit to New York to interrogate him.
During questioning, DER SPIEGEL and ZDF have learned, the FBI drilled him about a chat with Voloshyn that had taken place a few years prior.
A sentence in that chat raised suspicions that Krah may have received covert money from the pro-Kremlin Ukrainian.
Voloshyn allegedly assured the AfD member that the problem with "compensation" for Krah's "technical expenditures" had been solved.
From May on, "it will be as it used to be before February."
In his responses to questions as to whether he ever received any money, Krah has come up with a number of different stories.
One of them: The message about the "compensation" may have been sent to him inadvertently.
Or perhaps it had to do with the ticket for the opera ball in Saint Petersburg, which Krah paid for at the time.
Or maybe Voloshyn's poor English resulted in an unclear formulation.
Whatever the case, Krah insists that he never received money from Voloshyn: "no payments, in-kind benefits or any other kind of compensation."
Voloshyn, for his part, has a completely different explanation.
Perhaps the 2020 exchange was about refunding the AfD politician for his travel expenses that he may have incurred as a participant in a planned meeting between European and Ukrainian parliamentarians.
A meeting, he says, that didn’t end up taking place due to the coronavirus pandemic.
They are all interesting explanations.
But none of them fit all that well with the actual chat exchange.
And for Krah, the affair could become even more perilous.
As he confirmed when contacted, the FBI temporarily confiscated his mobile phone and spent 40 minutes searching through it.
The U.S. investigators are now sitting on a trove of data.
A Working Dinner with Lavrov in a "Very Cordial Atmosphere"
These are not just slip-ups made by individual politicians.
Since the party’s founding, Alternative for Germany members have been seeking out contacts with authoritarian states, Russia in particular.
In 2015, AfD board member Alexander Gauland, who is today the party’s honorary chairman, traveled to Saint Petersburg for a visit with Alexander Dugin, the right-wing extremist and leading proponent of a newly expanded Greater Russia.
In 2017, then AfD co-chair Frauke Petry flew to Moscow for meetings with influential functionaries in the Russian parliament, the Duma, and with right-wing extremist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
In 2018, Petry’s counterpart at the top of the party, Jörg Meuthen, headed east – and once he returned home, he began parroting Putin’s demands for an end to Western sanctions and "cooperation with Russia."
Later, the Russian government courted visitors from the AfD almost as though they were official state visitors.
In 2020, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received a German delegation led by party leader Tino Chrupalla to a working dinner in a "very cordial atmosphere," as the German guests would later gush.
Just a few months later, in March 2021, Chrupalla’s co-chair Alice Weidel also paid her respects to the Moscow leadership and issued a public call for Western sanctions to "finally end."
Weidel was accompanied by pro-Russian fellow AfD member Petr Bystron.
Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, AfD politicians Maximilian Krah, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel. [M] Lea Rossa / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: Anadolu / Getty Images; Sebastian Willnow / dpaThe AfD’s contacts with Russia’s autocracy are multifaceted – yet taken together, they begin looking like a tightly woven net.
And it is likely that an additional AfD associate has something to do with it: Vladimir Sergiyenko, who was an employee of AfD parliamentarian Eugen Schmidt until recently.
As DER SPIEGEL revealed last year, Sergiyenko regularly traveled between Germany and Moscow, even after Russia invaded Ukraine.
On two occasions, German customs officials discovered him carrying cash valued at just below the 10,000-euro limit that must be declared.
Western intelligence officials suspected Sergiyenko of being an agent of influence for the Kremlin.
In confidential chats, he discussed with an ominous contact person in Moscow whether German tank deliveries to Ukraine could potentially be stopped or delayed by taking legal action.
To do so, he wrote that "financial support" would be useful.
According to the chats, the goal of the operation was clear: "The government’s work is to be made more difficult."
As was later revealed, Sergiyenko’s contact in Moscow was likely an agent with the FSB, the Russian secret service agency.
Sergiyenko’s employment with the AfD parliamentarian ended in February.
He has claimed that accusations that he is an "agent of influence" are "unfounded."
Just a few months later, the AfD group in the German parliament did actually take the step of filing a complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.
Today, the AfD insists that the move had nothing to do with Sergiyenko.
There is, however, one episode from this case that has thus far gone unreported.
It demonstrates that Sergiyenko and the AfD established close contacts to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine several years ago.
During the last legislative period, Sergiyenko was working for then-AfD parliamentarian Ulrich Oehme.
In December 2019, the two of them traveled to Belarus and met in the President Hotel with representatives of the two self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
According to minutes from that meeting, the separatists expressed gratitude for the "courageous step taken by Mr. Oehme" to meet with them and complained about what they claimed was a Western-supported "putsch" in Ukraine in 2014.
All of those with whom Oehme and Sergiyenko met that day are currently on international sanctions lists.
When reached for comment, Oehme wrote that it had been an "official parliamentary group trip" and that he had merely been carrying out his "parliamentary duties as a member of the German Bundestag and of the Council of Europe."
The Kremlin's Far-Reaching Strategy for the AfD
But far does Moscow’s influence over the AfD extend?
One possible answer to that question comes directly from Russia’s center of power, the Presidential Administration – in the form of a several-page document that has the word "Manifesto" in its title.
Findings from international security agencies shed light on the likely origin of this document.
During a meeting in early September 2022 in the offices of the Presidential Administration, a departmental head named Tatyana Matveyeva was tasked with developing a new concept for the Alternative for Germany party to improve its poll numbers and to achieve a majority in elections at all levels, as a memo from a Western intelligence agency puts it.
Those present even apparently talked about a possible name change for the party.
The AfD, some suggested, could be called "United Germany" or "German Unity."
Western intelligence agencies believe the Kremlin hoped that the party, under its new name, would push through a ban on discriminating against so-called "Russia Germans" – the ethnic Germans and their descendants who were born in the Soviet Union but now live in Germany – and establish coalitions with other extremist groups.
The far-left Left Party – which had not yet splintered by that point – was explicitly mentioned as a potential partner.
Indeed, the meeting in Moscow was focused on nothing less than developing a far-reaching strategy for the future of the Alternative for Germany.
An except from the Kremlin's "Manifesto" for the AfD, party chair Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel.
An except from the Kremlin's "Manifesto" for the AfD, party chair Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel. [M] Lea Rossa / DER SPIEGEL; Foto: Clemens Bilan / EPAMatveyeva is hardly an unknown.
When the Washington Post reported in February of this year on an expansive disinformation campaign launched by the Kremlin as part of its war of aggression in Ukraine, her name appeared as the person responsible for propaganda units active in Europe.
Western intelligence agencies believe that the mission for developing a new concept for the AfD was given to Matveyeva during the meeting directly by Sergey Kiriyenko, the deputy chief of staff at the Presidential Administration.
He isn’t just one of the most powerful men in the country and one of Putin’s closest confidants, he is also responsible for propaganda and influence operations abroad.
A few weeks after that first meeting, Kiriyenko would present a "Manifesto of the German Unity Party."
It paints a gloomy picture of Germany and reads almost like a guide for AfD political messaging.
"Germany is facing its most serious challenge since the end of World War II," it insists at the beginning.
"Illiterate politicians, unable to calculate the consequences of their decisions, have drawn Germany into conflict with Russia , a natural ally of our country and of our people."
The document claims that large companies are fleeing Germany and speaks of the deindustrialization of the country.
The German economy is dying, the manifesto insists.
"The country's population is on the brink of disaster.
More than 30 percent of Germany's population is already below the poverty line or teetering on it, according to the tract.
"The internal division of the country is growing," the authors write.
The Kremlin strategists, the document makes clear, have nothing but disdain for Germany’s current government.
"All the efforts made on the road to true sovereignty by the great predecessors – Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl and many others – have been completely nullified in the incomplete year of the government of underachievers," it reads.
As a result, the document posits the following maxim: A German politician cannot have any "values," "ideals" or "commitments" that "are above the interests of Germany and obligations to the German people."
In the Germany of today, the authors continue, there are only two parties: The "party of Germany's enemies and the party of her friends."
The current government, the document makes abundantly clear, belongs to the enemies.
The closing sentence reads: "Together we shall prevail. Nothing and no one can stand against a united people."
The government of a foreign country shining a detailed and deeply considered spotlight on Germany's future and identifying the AfD as the ideal partner for realizing that future?
It would be difficult to come up with a clearer example of foreign meddling.
Speech By AfD State Leader Echoes Russian Document
It isn’t clear, however, what became of the paper, how it was received within the AfD or if the party even knew of its existence.
Questions to that effect went unanswered.
It is nonetheless noteworthy that central elements of the manifesto have popped up in speeches of influential AfD functionaries, including Björn Höcke.
The right-wing extremist is hoping to become the first German state governor from the AfD this fall in Thuringia. And he has never done much to hide his affinities for Russia.
In October 2022, he held a striking speech in Gera.
Curiously, his remarks, held on the occasion of German Unity Day in front of 8,000 people, did not focus on reunification, but on foreign policy – particularly on Berlin’s relationship with Moscow.
Höcke said that the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines (which run from Russia to Germany) through explosives was akin to "a declaration of war" against Germany.
He conjured a bleak scenario for German industry and for the welfare state, claiming that numerous companies were leaving Germany and that the country would soon find itself facing hunger and chaos.
The "White House" government building in Moscow, AfD politician Björn Höcke in Gera. [M] DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: Tian Bing / China News Service / VCG / Getty Images; Bodo Schackow / dpa / picture allianceHe also spoke of Germany’s "laughable weakness."
In the end, he invoked unity and said that the country must not allow itself to be influenced by "divisive wedges."
Höcke’s speech was filled with issues and ideas that sounded like they came almost word-for-word from the Kremlin manifesto.
When asked whether he was familiar with the propaganda paper from Moscow and why so many of the statements from his speech were extremely similar to those in the document, Höcke opted to forgo a direct answer.
Instead, he merely wrote: "Similar is not the same."
"A Deputy Under Absolute Control"
The so-called manifesto isn't the only document from the Moscow power apparatus in which strategists put forth their thoughts on the AfD.
Several years ago, DER SPIEGEL reported on a paper that was sent by the Duma to the highest levels of the Presidential Administration.
The paper was a solicitation of support for the pro-Russia AfD politician Markus Frohnmaier.
Should he be elected to the Bundestag, the paper made clear, he would be "a deputy under absolute control."
Frohnmaier rejects the claim and says he is unfamiliar with the document.
Strengthening the AfD is a worthwhile strategy for the Russians.
Anything that weakens the West is beneficial to the Kremlin – particularly now that Russia has an acute interest in torpedoing support for Ukraine.
But why do autocratic countries under communist leadership seek out ties with right-wing extremist parties and their politicians?
Filip Jirouš does not see that as a contradiction.
"China is investing in political actors who it believes have the potential of rising to power and could exert influence on public opinion," the China expert says.
The Chinese are concerned with changing the discourse about their country and with access to information.
Pro-Kremlin politicians are especially easy targets for Chinese lobbyists and intelligence agents, says Jirouš.
"Like Russia, China poses as a countermodel to the free West, which makes the countries interesting for many extremists."
Chinese secret services are extremely patient, he says, when it comes to exerting influence over people, winning their trust and, on occasion, buying their loyalty with money.
EU Institutions Struggle To Deal with Infringements By MEPs
In the European Parliament, the scandalous reports that have emerged in recent days and weeks have triggered significant unrest.
Qatargate, which focused on Doha’s attempts to exert influence on European parliamentarians, wasn’t all that long ago.
And now, the EU’s lawmaking body finds itself facing a slew of new accusations.
Just how difficult it has been for EU institutions to deal with infringements by European parliamentarians has been made clear by the case of Maximilian Krah.
The European Anti-Fraud Office, which is actually responsible for serious violations within EU institutions, hasn’t even opened up an investigation into Krah’s employee Jian G., despite clear evidence of inconsistencies.
The office has declined to officially comment on the issue.
Within parliament itself, an advisory committee is supposed to focus on such cases.
In theory, Parliament President Roberta Metsola could impose penalties, such as punitive fines.
Such a step hasn’t yet been taken, however, due to a lack of proof, say European Parliament sources, adding that national intelligence agencies are fundamentally opposed to passing information along to European parliamentarians.
"If the accusations against his employee are proven, Krah will have to pay back his assistant’s salary," demands Daniel Freund, a member of European Parliament with the Green Party.
"It is not acceptable for us to be feeding Chinese spies with money from European taxpayers."
Public prosecutors in Dresden are also approaching the case with care and have currently only launched a preliminary inquiry.
Should a formal investigation be opened, the Committee on Legal Affairs would have to lift Krah’s parliamentary immunity.
To at least send a message, lawmakers from the democratic groups of European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday that explicitly condemned attempts to exert influence by Russia and China.
The resolution explicitly mentioned Maximilian Krah.
Meanwhile, the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament, to which the Alternative for Germany and other far-right European political parties belong, is struggling to come up with a consistent approach to the autocratic countries of the world.
Some parties would prefer to follow in Donald Trump’s footsteps and pursue a confrontative course against China.
Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France has clearly distanced itself from the AfD on this and many other questions.
Rumors have begun spreading in European Parliament that the right-wing camp may be facing a shake-up after the elections.
If Rassemblement National stays in the ID group, observers believe that Le Pen could present the AfD with a choice: Either leave the group or get rid of Krah. Either way, the case is damaging to AfD efforts aimed at increasing its influence among far-right parties in Europe.
"It Was a Ticking Timebomb and Everyone Knew It"
Within the party itself, the mood also has begun to shift with regard to the AfD lead candidate in the European election campaign.
There are still some who continue insisting that Krah is the victim of a vast conspiracy involving European governments, secret services and the media.
They insist on the presumption of innocence for as long as no court has ruled against him and they are in favor of simply waiting things out.
But concerns are mounting inside the AfD that the scandal could actually leave some scars this time around in public opinion polls or even in election results.
"The accusations ruin our entire campaign.
Our main message was that we are patriots and that we would drain the Brussels swamp," says one functionary.
Now, he says, the party itself is looking "swampy."
Many in the AfD are blaming the party’s co-chairs Weidel and Chrupalla for the disaster, saying they supported Krah’s role as lead candidate despite warnings from others.
"It was a ticking atomic bomb and everyone knew it,” says an AfD source who is actually on good terms with the two party leaders.
Sources close to Weidel insist that there were never any concrete accusations against Krah.
For that reason, she agreed to join Chrupalla’s position.
Chrupalla’s team, meanwhile, says that the AfD chapter in Saxony had insisted that it be given the top slot on the European election list, which is why he chose to support Krah.
Either way, the finger-pointing has begun – in part because the next elections in Germany are rapidly approaching in fall 2025.
The AfD is planning to hold a party convention in late June.
Both Weidel and Chrupalla are hoping to be re-elected to their current leadership posts and are assiduously seeking to avoid making any missteps.
That is also one reason why party leadership has hardly taken any steps yet to censure the duo.
Bystron has been questioned, but he has thus far managed to avoid anything more serious despite his rather insubstantial statements on the case.
According to AfD sources, Krah showed little remorse in a first crisis meeting held in the wake of his employee’s arrest on Tuesday in a restaurant.
He only reluctantly accepted an order against making an appearance at the party’s election campaign launch in Donaueschingen, the sources say.
The only concession he was willing to make, they say, was refraining from broadcasting a television ad.
"It’s neither fish nor fowl," says one high-ranking functionary.
"Either you back him to the hilt, or you push for his resignation."
Krah made clear on Wednesday morning that he has made his choice.
In upbeat comments to journalists, he insisted that he is "and will remain" his party’s lead candidate.
Just as Moscow and Beijing would have wanted.
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