In Germany, deputies of the far-right AfD party are suspected of passing confidential information to Russia
The members of the German far-right party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) have found themselves at the center of yet another spy scandal. They are suspected of collecting confidential information about the Bundeswehr, which could have been passed on to foreign intelligence services, including Russia and China. This was reported by Der Spiegel.
On November 5, it became known that the AfD members of parliament, Gerold Otten and Rüdiger Lucassen, had submitted a series of official requests to the federal government. In them, they demanded extremely detailed and sensitive information about the state of the German armed forces. Security experts have called the data “fodder for spies.”
In addition, AfD representatives in the Erfurt state parliament asked about details of military transport, drone protection, and critical infrastructure. The party has long shown an increased interest in security-related topics, including in the Bundestag.
“It is quite obvious that the AfD is submitting a large number of systematically interconnected and very detailed requests regarding the military capabilities and gaps of the Bundeswehr”, said Thomas Rövekamp, chairman of the Bundestag’s Defense Committee.
According to him, given the volume and content of such requests, this “cannot be explained by a legitimate interest in considering these issues for the purpose of parliamentary control over the government”.
Previously, the AfD’s similar actions were commented on by the Minister of the Interior of Thuringia, Georg Mayer. According to sources in the coalition parties, the AfD faction in the Bundestag is interested in issues related to drones, protection systems against them and critical infrastructure, as well as in assessing the federal government’s ability to protect it.
The AfD is also demanding information from the government about the level of cyber protection of other ministries – digital technologies, transport, finance and defense.
The German counterintelligence agency (BfV) is currently investigating who formulated these technically complex requests. There is a suspicion that AfD deputies could only act as “frontmen”, while the questions themselves were prepared by foreign agents. Due to the sensitivity of the data received, the German Ministry of Defense has in most cases provided answers to such requests with the stamp “For official use only”.
“For some time now, we have been observing with increasing concern that the “Alternative for Germany” is abusing its parliamentary right to ask questions in order to systematically investigate our critical infrastructure”, said Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Mayer.
The AfD party strongly rejects the accusations, and Thuringia’s parliamentary group leader Björn Höcke accused Mayer of researching “preserved relics of the Cold War” and of fabricating spy stories.
