Co-chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, receives applause from her parliamentary group after speaking at the plenary session of the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany’s parliament, on October 16, 2025. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
Parliamentarians from the right-wing extremist AfD party may collect information about the country’s critical infrastructure and pass it to Russia. Deutsche Welle cites such data. According to Georg Maier, Thuringia’s interior minister, deputies use their right to request information from the executive bodies of the local states in order to gather data on Germany’s transport infrastructure, water supply, digital and energy supply.
Context regarding AfD and spying suspicions
According to Maier, the Thuringian party branch filed 47 such requests with the state parliament in the last 12 months alone. Each time, the demands for detailed information were intensified, the minister said.
With their requests it seems that the AfD is working on a list of tasks set by the Kremlin
– Georg Maier
“The Alternative for Germany is particularly interested in IT and equipment used by the police, for example, in the area of drone detection and defense,” Maier said.
Equipment used in civil protection, healthcare and the operations of the Bundeswehr is also among the party’s requests.
Leader of the AfD’s parliamentary group in Thuringia Björn Höcke rejected Maier’s allegations. He said that the state interior minister has no evidence. Björn Höcke – a controversial politician in Germany – has a conviction for using a prohibited Nazi-era slogan.
And the head of the Bundestag’s committee for intelligence oversight, Mark Heinrichmann, said that the suspicions of Thuringia’s interior minister Georg Maier were unfounded.
I am firmly convinced that Putin is using the AfD as a tool for eavesdropping, and that the party leadership – however much it may claim otherwise – does not have the power to prevent this form of betrayal
– Mark Heinrichmann
He also added that AfD members were not elected to the Bundestag’s Parliamentary Oversight Committee for Intelligence, which meets exclusively in secret and is responsible for monitoring the work of the federal intelligence services. All this because they are suspected of ties with Russia.
On May 2, in Germany the AfD was deemed a threat to democracy and extremist. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution concluded that the party’s ideology is based on an ethnic understanding of belonging to a people, which runs counter to the foundations of democracy.
On August 11, AfD politician Tino Krupalla urged Ukraine to concede territories to Russia and criticized Ukrainian refugees in Germany. He called the Russian Federation “the largest nuclear power” and emphasized that the Russia-Ukraine war “is not ours”.