With growing success, the AfD is the German amplifier of Putin's perfidious propaganda narrative of peace-loving Russia and the aggressor NATO. With this statement, the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, has expressed what has been evident for months.

And not just since the submissive wait of AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla with Alexander Gauland in tow at the Russian embassy in Berlin. The Russian myth of the alleged violation of legitimate security interests by a West expanding eastwards has been spread by AfD politicians in Germany since the invasion of Ukraine.

Perpetrator-victim reversal

This classic perpetrator-victim reversal with great understanding for the aggressor Russia, which is also served by Sahra Wagenknecht on the left, is resonating more than ever in parts of the population. Haldenwang's finding is bitter, according to which the Kremlin no longer needs its own media such as "Russia Today" to carry its narrative to the German population thanks to German loudspeakers.

The fact that the German government and its notoriously taciturn chancellor, as well as the CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and Greens, are doing so little to counter Russian disinformation from Moscow's fifth column, must not only worry Haldenwang. The soaring popularity of the AfD in the polls and probably soon also in elections also has to do with this.