In April 2023, the Washington Post reported on the Kremlin’s attempts to interfere in German domestic politics, mostly through a manifesto drawn for the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and an attempt to unite the far-right and the far-left in an anti-war coalition to curb support for Ukraine. One year later, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported additional details about the manifesto. They explained that, in July 2022, the Kremlin commissioned Tatyana Matveyeva, the deputy to the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko, to draw up a new concept for AfD, aiming at boosting support for the party and reaching majorities at the local, regional, and federal level, notably through cooperation between the far-right and far-left. The documents suggested rebranding AfD under the name of “United Germany” or “German Unity” and promoting the end of discrimination against Russian Germans.

Whether the document reached AfD is unclear. However, interviews with officials and affiliates from both AfD and the new far-left party BSW suggest that at least one member of each party has been in contact with Kremlin officials when the plans were being drawn up.