Pro‑Russian surge in East German elections fuels Putin's hopes

"Vladimir Putin might be embittered by the unexpected invasion of Ukraine into the Russian Kursk region this month, but this weekend he is likely to be celebrating territorial gains further west - in Germany," writes Politico.

Pro-Russian parties in three eastern German states - Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia - are poised to achieve significant gains in the regional elections in September, with two taking place on Sunday.

The pro-Russian Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a strong chance of taking first place in all three states, and thanks to the recently formed left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), Moscow has a chance to regain a strong position over a broad area of the former GDR, a region it dominated for decades during the Cold War.

"If forecasts are confirmed in the voting, the results will certainly cause deep anxiety across Germany," it reads. "A huge victory for the extremists would both reveal the extent to which the German political establishment's efforts to bridge the East-West divide have failed and destabilise Berlin's already shaky three-party coalition," the authors write.

"The victory would also be a personal victory for Putin: the Russian leader started as a KGB spy in the 1980s in Dresden, which left him with a lasting fascination with all things German. A biographer once called him 'a German in the Kremlin,'" it added.

Although not all parties are as openly pro-Russian as the AfD, they share two narratives pushed by the far right: that NATO bears co-responsibility for the war in Ukraine and that a peaceful solution would be possible if the West took diplomacy seriously.

The main ruling parties in Germany at the national level - the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the Free Democrats (FDP) - have been relegated to the status of parties with no chance of winning, with polls forecasting a combined result of around 12 per cent in Saxony and Thuringia, and 27 per cent in Brandenburg. Even when Germany's largest centre-right force, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), is included in the combined poll results of the main parties, it does not exceed 50 percent.

The rapid rise of the AfD and other populist parties in the East suggests that such an approach has not been effective. According to the latest polls, the Greens and the FDP, the smallest of the three parties in Germany's national coalition, face the possibility of being excluded from all three state parliaments. To gain seats, parties must receive at least five per cent of the vote.

The fact that even a leading German conservative from the East was willing to bow to Putin highlights the extent to which Russian narratives have taken root in the region. "Even if the majority of Germans in the East have no illusions about Putin, the population still has to overcome decades of anti-Western propaganda. For many, Moscow is no worse than Washington, which populist politicians accuse of acting behind the scenes to pursue its own goals in Ukraine," it reads.

Most of the left-wing politicians in the East are concentrated in the BSW and the Left Party, the successor to the former East German Communist Party, and advocate for peace rather than for Putin.

Critics dismiss such calls from the left as naive. Pressuring the West to stop arms deliveries while Ukraine is to cease fighting and surrender territory ultimately plays into Moscow's hands and legitimises its invasion of Ukraine, they argue.

However, the greater threat remains the AfD, which, if it wins in all three states, would trigger a political earthquake with reverberations well beyond Germany's borders. Some argue that such a scenario is more likely after last week's knife attack in Solingen, allegedly carried out by a Syrian suspected of links to the Islamic State.

The AfD's ties to Moscow are well-documented. Before the European elections in June, German authorities revealed an alleged Russian influence operation involving one of the AfD's main candidates. Nevertheless, the party took second place with 16 per cent and performed particularly well in the East.

Many high-ranking AfD activists do not hide their sympathy for Putin's authoritarian regime.