Many of AfD politicians are known as long-time reliable friends and faithful allies of Putin’s regime. So it’s not surprising that AfD party members were repeatedly invited by the Russian authorities to legitimate imitation of “elections”. For instance – the one which was organized by Kremlin on 15-17 March this year both within Russia and in illegally occupied Ukrainian territories, including Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea.
According to FAKE INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS AND EXPERTS AT RUSSIA’S FRAUDULENT 2024 “PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION”, the report issued by the European Platform for Democratic Elections (financially supported by the European Union and the Federal Foreign Office of Germany), five fake political observers from Germany were identified. The report used analysis of Russian and other media reports, as well as social networks such as Facebook, X/Twitter and Telegram.
Three out of five German fake observers appeared to belong to AfD party (Alternative für Deutschland): Andreas Jurca, Elena Roon and Ulrich Singer. All of them are members of the Bavarian State Parliament.
This is not an isolated example of pro-Kremlin activities by AfD’s members . During the 2018 Russian presidential election, seven AfD members visited Russian-occupied Crimea as fake observers. Waldemar Herdt (AfD member of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021) has regularly appeared on Russia’s TV shows, declaring, among other things, that the “referendum” in occupied Crimea was legitimate, while denying any annexation. Others are known for strong ties to the Russian government, rejecting EU sanctions against Russia, supporting the Assad government in Syria, supporting Russian propaganda against Ukraine and more.
On the eve of the elections to the European Parliament national and regional parliaments in Europe as well as other institutions should introduce laws and codes of conduct that would prevent their members from participating in politically biased events like election observation. Voting for the supporters of the aggressor is equally inappropriate.
