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Germany’s parliament recently held a special session to discuss whether members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) may have been deliberately acting in Russia’s interests. The debate was initiated by lawmakers from the Social Democrats (SPD) and the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, who demanded explanations from AfD’s leadership after the populist party made a series of unusually detailed parliamentary inquiries into the state of the country’s defense and cybersecurity systems, according to a report by Der Spiegel.
Thomas Röwekamp, chair of the Bundestag’s Defense Committee and a CDU member, said AfD lawmakers had submitted “systematically connected and extremely detailed” questions about the Bundeswehr’s capabilities and “combat readiness gaps.” The scope and level of detail, he said, “cannot be explained by a legitimate interest in parliamentary oversight of the government.” Röwekamp suggested that the effort appeared to be “a targeted and systematic collection of military information from the Defense Ministry and the Bundeswehr, information of significant value to foreign powers — in particular Russia, which has for years continuously intensified its espionage and hybrid attacks against Germany.”
Georg Maier, interior minister of the German state of Thuringia, earlier said his ministry had observed similar AfD inquiries in the state parliament, focusing on transport, energy, and digital infrastructure. He suggested the party might be “acting on the Kremlin’s orders” in its inquiries.
According to Der Spiegel, Germany’s Defense Ministry under Boris Pistorius has also concluded that these actions appear to be coordinated. Officials reportedly believe the pattern of inquiries resembles “targeted question lists from Moscow,” aimed at identifying vulnerabilities in Germany’s military and civilian infrastructure.
One example cited by Der Spiegel involved a “minor inquiry” numbered 21/2409, in which AfD lawmakers demanded to know how many data centers fall under the Interior Ministry’s jurisdiction, how their backup power networks function, and whether they can operate during a crisis. Similar questions were submitted to the ministries of defense, transport, finance, and digital transformation.
Christian Democrat parliamentary leader Jens Spahn warned that if AfD co-chair Alice Weidel does not clarify the origin of these inquiries, she will “make herself complicit in possible treason.” AfD representatives denied the allegations, saying their questions were meant only to “expose government shortcomings” and that all answers to them are publicly available.
Der Spiegel also recalled that in 2021, China’s intelligence service allegedly tried to exploit the AfD’s parliamentary inquiry mechanism for its own purposes. According to the outlet, an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security persuaded intermediaries to submit a question about Hong Kong in order to “put pressure on the German government.”