The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party won 43.8 percent of the popular vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, trouncing the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU). That victory brought a party which follows in the historical footsteps of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party closer than it has ever come since World War II to ruling a German state. Two weeks later, the AfD took more than 38 percent of the vote in a regional election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the Christian Democrats failed to cross the 5 percent threshold to enter the regional parliament – “a disaster”, said Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The left-wing Die Linke party took 25.3 percent of the vote in a separate by-election in Berlin on Sunday, illustrating how German voters are being pulled by both ends of the political spectrum. Here’s why the far right’s rise in Germany matters to the rest of the world: Fieschi expects immediate effects on German policy towards Ukraine, which relies heavily on German financial and military industrial might. It’s bad news for Germany, and it’s bad news for the Franco-German engine, and therefore for Ukraine,” Fieschi said.
Germany’s AfD wants dialogue with Russia. On Tuesday, as Merz’s future looked uncertain, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lauded the AfD as a popular political force talking about “establishing relations” with Russia. Ronald Meinardus, research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), explained how the AfD has adopted Russian positions.
On Monday, Moscow reinforced the argument that dependence on Russian gas is good for Germany. There was unexpected good news for the German economy on the same day, when the country’s leading business newspaper, Handelsblatt, reported a growth forecast of 1.3 percent for 2026 – double what was previously expected. The inward-looking AfD wants to prioritise spending for Germans, and is against foreign aid in any form.
It will struggle to govern even the two states where it has a relative majority, since most other parties have ruled out working with it, and a national election is not due until early 2029. Yet its victories put psychological pressure on the Merz government now, said Fieschi. That’s why they’re not interested in any negotiations or ceasefire whatever, because actually, the political situation in Europe, in the US, is not optimistic at all,” said Danylyuk, who has served as a senior adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister, its foreign intelligence service and its commander-in-chief.
That now seems highly unlikely. Nor is Europe likely to resume discussion of lending Ukraine more than 200 billion euros ($230bn) in immobilised Russian money in the European financial system. That would be a game-changer, financing Ukraine’s war machine for years.
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