AfD calls for an end to support for Ukraine

Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will launch a joint motion with the small far-left BSW party in a regional parliament calling for an end to military support for Ukraine.

The motion, which will be debated in the parliament of the state of Saxony-Anhalt next week, will have no immediate impact on Germany’s foreign policy, which is exclusively the responsibility of the federal government in Berlin.

But it underlines the AfD’s strong push to end German support for Ukraine and to restore ties with Russia, which have been largely severed since Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“This motion symbolises the desire for change,” Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, said in a statement.

Siegmund led the anti-immigration AfD to its best election result last month, topping the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt but falling short of the majority it would need to form the AfD’s first government.

Since then he has explored possible cooperation deals with BSW, which, like the AfD, has long opposed German support for Ukraine.

Siegmund said the party would use every opportunity to put pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government “to finally campaign for an end to the war instead of prolonging it” and to use the money spent on Ukraine “for the people in our own country”.

In a message on the social-media platform X, BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht said Germany needed “a federal government that finally makes an effort to restart dialogue with Moscow”.

The motion comes about two weeks after German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, in a meeting that gave no sign of progress.

Lavrov dismissed the meeting at a press conference afterwards. Germany’s Foreign Ministry said the meeting had reinforced Berlin’s conviction that Moscow remains unwilling to negotiate either a ceasefire or an end to the war in Ukraine.

Merz visited Kyiv at the weekend to reaffirm Berlin’s support for Ukraine, while German authorities have accused Russia of carrying out a series of hybrid and drone attacks in Germany, something Moscow denies.