The Alternative for Germany’s record election victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday has marked a milestone for the far right and highlighted a growing political shift in Europe towards positions more sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The anti-immigration party, known by its German acronym AfD, has openly sympathised with Putin’s attempt to batter Ukraine into submission, even as Russia has stepped up its aggression towards the European Union. The development comes at a particularly sensitive moment for Germany, which days before the vote blamed Russia for a failed drone attack at an airport in Leipzig last month.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the election result would clearly please the Kremlin. Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Monday after meeting the party leadership, Merz said Russia’s leadership sought to destabilise the political and social values underpinning the West.
“The goal of the Russian leadership is the destabilization of the value system that we have called the West,” Merz said. “And this value system is not up for discussion.”
The political shift is not confined to Germany. In France and Italy, the second- and third-biggest EU countries, populist leaders are advocating policies towards Kyiv that echo Moscow’s talking points, potentially complicating European efforts to maintain support for Ukraine.
In France, Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally party, has argued that unconditional French support for Ukraine should be replaced by a more transactional relationship with the country. Bardella, 30, is a likely prime minister if Marine Le Pen wins next year’s presidential vote. Le Pen consistently tops surveys for first-round voting intentions, raising concerns among Ukraine’s allies that the support provided by President Emmanuel Macron could be at risk.
France’s financial difficulties, Bardella argued, require the country to seek a return for its military assistance to Kyiv, which has been resisting a Russian onslaught for more than four years. “We are drowning in debt. We are drowning in deficits. And it is irresponsible to make spending commitments and promises of financial support to a country without any guarantees,” he told Bloomberg TV on Saturday at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.
Italy, meanwhile, has seen Roberto Vannacci, an ultranationalist former army general, surge in the polls with a message centred on cracking down on immigration and seeking peace with Russia in Ukraine. A Sept. 4 Youtrend survey showed his National Future party as the second-strongest rightwing political group after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
“The truth is never entirely on one side,” Vannacci said in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Cernobbio event on Saturday. “Rather, there are a whole series of contributing factors that lead to these situations. And we need to examine them very pragmatically and objectively.”
The AfD remains isolated from its French and Italian counterparts over its endorsement of large-scale expulsions of foreigners. Le Pen ended cooperation with the party in 2024 after an AfD lawmaker said in an interview that not every Nazi SS member should be considered a criminal. Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy has embraced transatlantic ties, has also kept her distance from the AfD because of its closeness to Russia.
Yet the prospect of potential political allies moving closer to the centres of power in Europe’s three biggest nations is raising concern as Russia shows no indication of curtailing its aggression.
“The parties that are sort of blind to this threat and say that we should not do anything with this because it’s not our concern, are gaining ground,” the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, told reporters on Monday in Vilnius. “So I’m just afraid that we might, you know, wake up in a situation where we haven’t done enough to be able to deter the threats and defend ourselves.”
The Kremlin’s response to Germany’s political tensions has been accompanied by increasingly stark rhetoric from Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Germany of moving towards a direct confrontation with Russia while criticising Berlin’s decision to close some diplomatic offices after the drone incident at Leipzig airport.
“In general, this is, broadly speaking, kind of the beginning of a real war,” Lavrov said in comments published on Telegram by Russian state TV channel Vesti.
