AfD leader says Putin ‘does not pose a threat to Germany’ – surprises with statement on Poland

A leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party says Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia does not pose a threat to his country – but Poland potentially does.

The comments, which echo the Kremlin’s messaging, come at a time when centrist German politicians are increasingly warning that the AfD is using its growing influence to act as Putin’s mouthpiece inside Germany – a claim that AfD leaders strongly deny.

Putin “has done nothing to me,” Tino Chrupalla, co-chair of the AfD, told German public television. “I don’t see any danger for Germany from Russia at the moment,” he added, according to the report. foreign media, the Telegraph reports.

Chrupalla even continued to insist that any country could potentially pose a threat to Germany.

“Take Poland, for example,” Chrupalla said, citing the country’s refusal to extradite a Ukrainian national who German authorities suspect of sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipeline in 2022. “Poland could also be a threat to us.”

German centrists are increasingly portraying the AfD as a party representing Russian interests from within Germany, with some going so far as to argue that the Kremlin is exploiting the party’s access to official information for espionage.

Marc Henrichmann, the conservative chairman of the Bundestag’s intelligence oversight committee, said he believes Russia is doing exactly that.

“Russia is naturally exercising its obvious influence in parliament, especially in the AfD, for the purpose of espionage and obtaining sensitive information,” Henrichmann recently told the German newspaper Handelsblatt.

“The AfD is gratefully allowing itself to be used for this betrayal by Putin.”

And Chrupalla has strongly countered these accusations.

“They accuse us of things they can never prove, and I find this disingenuous,” he said at length.

Chrupalla’s comments come as AfD leaders are embroiled in an internal dispute over a group of party politicians who were planning a trip to Russia to attend an international conference of BRICS countries in Sochi, Russia.

The AfD’s other co-chair, Alice Weidel — who has tried to improve the AfD’s image, rein in some of its more openly pro-Russian politicians and has sought closer relations with Donald Trump’s administration in the US — has tried to stop politicians from participating, signaling a growing rift within her party over how far support for Russia should go. /Telegraph/