German far-right politicians are accused of links to China and Russia.

The short version

• Germany’s far-right party, AfD, rocked by scandals before the EU elections.
• Allegations of connections to both China and Russia.
• Assistant to AfD’s top candidate in the EU elections, Maximilian Krah, arrested and charged with espionage for China.
• AfD member Petr Bystroň is suspected of having received Russian money from a propaganda medium.
• The party leadership takes these matters very seriously, but the voters become loyal, the professor believes.

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Alternative für Deutschland – among friends the AfD – had some adventurous opinion polls around the New Year, but now things are no longer going smoothly.

Two serious issues have affected the party:

• An assistant to the AfD’s top candidate for the EU elections, Maximilian Krah, has been arrested and charged with espionage for the benefit of China.
• Petr Bystroň, who also sits in the Bundestag for the AfD, is suspected of having received Russian money from the propaganda media Voice of Europe.
• Together, Maximilian Krah was questioned by the FBI about possible payments from a pro-Russian activist when he traveled to the United States.

In contrast to previous scandals, it appears that the party leadership takes these matters very seriously.

The accusations of Chinese espionage in particular are considered serious:

Since 2019, Maximilian Krah has had an assistant who is referred to in the German media as Jian G. According to ARD, Jian G. moved to Germany from China in 2002 to study in Berlin, and when Krah hired him, he had become a German citizen and had a company who traded with China.

According to the indictment, he is said to have on several occasions handed over to his Chinese contact information about ongoing negotiations and decisions in the German parliament, the Bundestag.

He allegedly worked for China’s security service.

When Krah became an EU parliamentarian, Jian G. accompanied him to meetings in Brussels and Strasbourg. The accusations are that he has sent China information about these meetings. He is also said to have spied on Chinese dissidents living in Germany.

German police raided his apartment in Dresden early one morning. Now he is formally imprisoned.

There is a significant difference between these two issues: While many within the AfD are pro-Russian and see no problem with one of their politicians being paid to say what most of them think, there is no corresponding sympathy for China within the party.

Even before this happened, there were people within the AfD who wondered why Maximilian Krah had hired this assistant completely without political experience, and Krah has also received reactions that he has defended China on several occasions and stated that the criticism of human rights is without root in reality , reports Süddeutsche Zeitung.

But these two are not the only fires that the AfD would prefer to have extinguished as soon as possible:

– Any form of espionage goes against the idea of ​​a party that wants to put national interests first, says Stefan Marschall at the University of Düsseldorf to the Reuters news agency.

He does not rule out, however, that the cases could make the party win solidarity among its supporters.

Professor Wiebke Kolbe at Lund University comments on the Krah case as follows to VG:

– AfD’s latest scandal, in which an employee of EU parliamentarian Maximilian Krah is accused of spying for China, seems to seriously unsettle the party leadership, unlike previous scandals in the party.

– After Krah had met the party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, it is clear that Krah will not be present at the launch of the election campaign for the EU elections next weekend. At the same time, it is too late to take him away as the first candidate for the election.

– What do you think this could mean for support for the AfD?

– The latest scandal will probably not deter AfD’s voters. They remain loyal to their party despite all violations of party laws, suspicions of bribery from Russian organizations and other violations. I therefore assume that the AfD will make big gains both in the upcoming EU elections and in the state elections in the autumn.

While pollsters recorded a peak of 23 percent for the AfD in December 2023, they have fallen to 16-18 percent following massive street protests against their rise and the creation of a new left-populist party that is taking part of the vote base.

An anonymous AfD politician tells Reuters that key positions in the party are increasingly being filled by people with sympathies for Russia and China.

In 2021, the two mentioned AfD politicians, Krah and Bystroň, posted https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1774173724184600839 the most hated politician in Kyiv, pro-Russian Viktor Medvedtsjuk.

– If the impression is that the AfD is comrades with authoritarian, dictatorial regimes in Russia and China, these accusations can damage them, Hermann Binkert, head of the polling agency INSA, told Reuters.