What Would an AfD Germany Mean for Ukraine?

By Matthew Parish

Thursday 8 October 2026

For Ukraine, there are certain European capitals whose politics matter disproportionately. Warsaw matters because Poland is the geographical bridge between Ukraine and most of its Western military suppliers. Paris matters because France remains Europe’s principal nuclear military power within the European Union. London matters because Britain possesses nuclear weapons, substantial intelligence capabilities and an unusually assertive approach towards European security despite having left the European Union. But Berlin may matter most of all.

Germany possesses Europe’s largest economy and an enormous industrial base. She sits at the centre of the European Union’s political machinery and has become one of Ukraine’s most important military supporters. The direction of German politics therefore has consequences extending far beyond Germany’s borders, and for Ukraine the extraordinary rise of the Alternative für Deutschland deserves particular attention.

The question is not whether the AfD is about to take control of Germany. Germany’s coalition politics and the continuing refusal of other major parties to cooperate with it make such a development institutionally difficult. Nor would every aspect of German foreign policy necessarily change simply because the AfD acquired greater political influence. Nevertheless, the party has now become sufficiently powerful that its foreign-policy ideas must be taken seriously, and those ideas differ profoundly from the assumptions upon which German policy towards Ukraine has rested since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The consequences could therefore be immense. They would extend from military assistance and sanctions to energy policy, NATO, Ukrainian membership of the European Union and ultimately Germany’s understanding of her own place in the European security order.

A fundamentally different view of Russia

The central difference concerns Russia herself. The AfD’s published 2025 federal election programme explicitly called for the immediate abolition of economic sanctions against Russia and the restoration of the Nord Stream pipelines. It described renewed unrestricted trade with Russia as economically advantageous to Germany and envisaged Ukraine as a neutral state outside both NATO and the European Union.

These are not minor disagreements about the quantity of German military assistance or the precise terms upon which peace negotiations should begin. They amount to a different conception of the European security order and, in particular, of the relationship Germany ought to maintain with Moscow.

The prevailing view in Berlin under Chancellor Friedrich Merz is that Russia’s invasion represents a threat not merely to Ukraine but to European security more broadly. Merz has repeatedly argued that Germany should continue supporting Ukraine because Ukrainian resistance contributes directly to German and European security. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, by contrast, has demanded a different course, emphasising negotiations and the restoration of a more conventional relationship with Russia.

The difference is therefore philosophical as well as practical. The present German government understands Ukrainian resistance as part of Germany’s own security architecture. The AfD’s programme instead places greater emphasis upon German national interests defined in terms of restored economic relations with Russia and a settlement under which Ukraine remains outside the principal Western political and military institutions. From Kyiv’s perspective, that distinction could hardly be more important.

The weapons question

The most immediate consequence of substantially greater AfD influence would concern weapons. Germany has become an important component of Ukraine’s military supply chain, and German assistance encompasses air defence, ammunition, armoured vehicles, drones and industrial cooperation. At a time when American policy towards Ukraine has become less predictable, the European contribution has become correspondingly more important.

That dependence is particularly significant because Ukraine continues to face immense military financing requirements. Kyiv must simultaneously finance a vast standing military, acquire foreign weapons and ammunition, expand domestic production and develop increasingly sophisticated technologies including interceptor drones and long-range strike systems. The European financial architecture supporting these efforts has therefore become an important part of Ukraine’s ability to continue the war.

Germany is central to making such European commitments credible because Europe cannot easily replace both American and German support simultaneously. An AfD-influenced German government need not formally abandon Ukraine to produce significant consequences: it could simply reduce new military commitments, decline particularly expensive weapons packages, resist common European financing mechanisms or insist that German resources be redirected towards domestic priorities.

Wars are affected by margins, and a few missing air-defence batteries, delayed ammunition contracts or cancelled production investments may have consequences disproportionate to their apparent financial value. For Ukraine, therefore, the relevant danger would not necessarily arrive as a dramatic announcement from Berlin that Germany had switched sides. It might emerge through a succession of smaller decisions producing a progressively weaker German commitment.

Nord Stream and the return of Russian energy

Energy would be another obvious fault line. For decades the German-Russian economic relationship rested upon an extraordinarily simple bargain: Russia supplied relatively inexpensive energy while German industry transformed that energy into sophisticated manufactured products for global export. The arrangement survived the deterioration of political relations after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and collapsed decisively only after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The AfD argues for restoring substantial elements of this relationship. Its programme has advocated repairing Nord Stream, removing sanctions and rebuilding commercial relations with Russia, all in the name of reducing energy costs and improving German industrial competitiveness.

Supporters of such an approach can advance a coherent economic argument. Germany’s industrial model has suffered from high energy costs, Chinese competition, regulatory pressures and weak growth, and cheaper Russian energy might therefore appear attractive to parts of German industry. Yet restoring the old energy relationship would have geopolitical consequences that cannot be separated from its economics.

Russian hydrocarbon exports provide revenue to the Russian state. Re-establishing large-scale German purchases would also recreate economic interdependence between Berlin and Moscow at precisely the moment when much of Eastern Europe has sought to dismantle it. For Poland and the Baltic states this would revive memories of the pre-2022 German approach towards Russia, under which commercial integration was often presented as a means of moderating Moscow.

Critics of that policy argue that precisely the opposite occurred. European dependence upon Russian energy increased while Russia became progressively more aggressive. For Ukraine, a restored German-Russian energy partnership would therefore represent far more than an alteration in Germany’s electricity and industrial policies; it would signify a change in Berlin’s conception of Russia from a strategic threat towards an economic partner with which political differences must ultimately be accommodated.

Sanctions and European power

The same logic applies to sanctions. Germany’s economic scale means that European sanctions against Russia possess far greater significance with German participation than without it, while the AfD has consistently challenged the sanctions regime and argued that it imposes substantial economic costs upon Germany herself.

Were Germany seriously to pursue the removal or substantial relaxation of sanctions, the consequences would reach into the institutional architecture of the European Union. European sanctions depend upon political agreement among member states, and a German government determined to weaken them would therefore alter negotiations in Brussels even before any formal reversal occurred.

This is one reason the politics of Germany cannot be considered exclusively German. Smaller European states have already demonstrated how individual governments can obstruct common policies towards Ukraine, but Germany is vastly more powerful than those states. A Berlin government fundamentally opposed to sanctions or substantial Ukrainian assistance would consequently possess much greater capacity to reshape European policy.

The institutional consequences might prove as important as the financial ones. European unity towards Russia has always depended upon governments with substantially different histories, economic interests and perceptions of security agreeing upon a common position, and removing Germany from the core of that consensus could fundamentally alter the balance.

NATO would probably survive

It would nevertheless be misleading to imagine that an AfD government would necessarily withdraw Germany immediately from NATO. The party’s position is more complicated: it has regarded NATO membership as, for the foreseeable future, an important element of German security while arguing that the alliance should return to being a strictly defensive organisation and that Europe should eventually develop a security structure capable of incorporating Russia.

There is an obvious tension here. Germany might remain formally committed to NATO while adopting a substantially different understanding of what the alliance exists to accomplish. A Germany reluctant to confront Russia politically and determined to rebuild commercial relations with Moscow would inevitably influence NATO’s internal discussions, particularly where Ukraine was concerned.

This distinction is important because alliances are not merely treaties. Their effectiveness depends upon political expectations, military preparations and confidence that members share broadly similar assessments of the threats they face. Article 5 can remain unchanged while governments disagree profoundly about Russia, military expenditure, deployments on NATO’s eastern flank and assistance to non-member Ukraine.

The political character of an alliance can therefore change without a single word of its founding treaty being amended. For Ukraine, which is not protected by Article 5, such political changes could be particularly consequential because its security depends heavily upon voluntary decisions by NATO member governments.

Ukraine and the European Union

The AfD’s position on Ukraine’s European future is equally consequential. Its political programme has envisaged Ukraine as a neutral state outside both NATO and the European Union, an approach fundamentally inconsistent with Kyiv’s current strategic trajectory.

That position would place an AfD-led or heavily AfD-influenced Germany in direct tension with Ukraine’s ambition to join the EU. Germany’s importance within European institutions means that determined German opposition would present an enormous practical obstacle to Ukrainian accession, regardless of the attitudes of many other member states.

Again, this goes beyond money or weapons. For Ukraine, EU membership is part of the country’s post-war strategic identity. It represents integration into a European political, economic and legal system after centuries in which Ukrainian territory has existed between competing empires and spheres of influence.

The concept of Ukrainian neutrality therefore carries profoundly different meanings depending upon where one is standing. From one perspective, neutrality can be presented as a compromise capable of reducing tensions between Russia and NATO. From another, it can appear to grant Moscow an enduring veto over the alliances and institutions that Ukrainians themselves may wish to join.

That disagreement lies close to the heart of the European argument about the war. It concerns not merely where borders should eventually be drawn but whether powerful neighbouring states are entitled to determine the international affiliations of smaller countries.

Washington makes Berlin more important

There is another reason German politics now matters more than it did at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The United States remains overwhelmingly important to European security, but Washington increasingly expects Europe to bear a greater proportion of the financial and military burden, while repeated debates in American politics have demonstrated that European governments cannot simply assume that the scale and character of American support will remain constant indefinitely.

This produces an uncomfortable equation for Kyiv. The less certain American support becomes, the more important European support becomes. The more important European support becomes, the more important Germany becomes. The more important Germany becomes, the more consequential the rise of a major German political party sceptical of the existing Ukraine policy becomes.

These developments cannot sensibly be considered separately. Ukraine’s strategic position is affected not merely by events on the battlefield but by electoral politics in countries thousands of kilometres from the front, because modern warfare depends upon financial, technological and industrial networks stretching across the democratic world.

Poland would become still more important

A German change of direction would also rearrange the balance of power inside Europe. Poland and the Baltic states have generally taken a harder view of Russia than Germany historically did, and their geographical position provides an obvious explanation. Russian military power is not an abstraction in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius or Warsaw.

Were Berlin to move towards accommodation with Moscow, Poland would probably acquire still greater importance as Ukraine’s principal strategic advocate within continental Europe. Britain and the Nordic states might similarly become increasingly important, while France could find itself attempting to mediate between competing visions of European strategic autonomy.

Europe could then develop an unusual geographical division. A northern and eastern coalition might favour continuing military resistance to Russian expansion, while other states might favour accommodation and restored economic relations. The result would not necessarily be the collapse of the European Union or NATO because European institutions have survived severe disagreements before, but the political unity surrounding Ukraine would become substantially more difficult to maintain.

That in itself would benefit Moscow strategically. Russia does not necessarily need European countries actively to support it; divisions amongst the countries opposing Russian policy may be sufficient to improve Moscow’s bargaining position.

Moscow does not need Germany to become an ally

This point is worth emphasising because discussions about European parties sympathetic to improved relations with Russia sometimes become unnecessarily melodramatic. Russia does not require Germany to become a Russian ally; it merely benefits if Germany becomes less willing to oppose Russian objectives.

There is an enormous spectrum between active military support for Ukraine and active support for Russia. Germany could remain a NATO member, condemn aspects of Russian conduct and maintain normal diplomatic relations with Kyiv while simultaneously ending weapons deliveries, opposing Ukrainian NATO membership, resisting Ukrainian EU accession, removing sanctions and restoring Russian energy imports.

From Moscow’s perspective, such a transformation would still represent an extraordinary strategic improvement. Indeed it might be more politically sustainable than an openly pro-Russian Germany because it could be defended domestically as economic pragmatism, diplomatic realism or the pursuit of German national interests rather than as a geopolitical realignment.

This is why terminology can obscure more than it illuminates. The relevant question is not whether the AfD is “pro-Russian” in some abstract sense. The more useful question is what its stated policies would actually do, and on sanctions, energy, Ukrainian neutrality and relations with Moscow, the party’s positions provide sufficient material for serious analysis.

Germany has changed before

There is an historical irony here. For much of the Cold War, West Germany existed on the geographical frontier between two political systems. Its security depended upon the United States and NATO, while successive German governments nevertheless sought mechanisms for managing relations with Moscow.

Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik pursued engagement with the Soviet bloc without abandoning the Western alliance. Later German governments developed an increasingly dense economic relationship with Russia, culminating in the Nord Stream projects, while the assumption underlying much of this policy was that economic interdependence encouraged political moderation.

February 2022 shattered that assumption for much of the German political establishment. The Zeitenwende announced by Olaf Scholz represented an acknowledgement that commercial integration had not prevented a major European war and that Germany needed to reconsider assumptions about defence, energy and Russia that had accumulated over several decades.

The contemporary argument is partly about whether Germany should reverse that conclusion. The AfD essentially proposes that some form of normal German-Russian economic relationship should eventually be reconstructed, while its opponents argue that doing so before the underlying security conflict has been resolved would reproduce precisely the vulnerabilities exposed in 2022.

That is a legitimate strategic dispute and Germans themselves must resolve it democratically. Ukrainians, however, have an obvious interest in its outcome because decisions made in Berlin may ultimately determine the quantity of weapons arriving in Ukraine, the durability of sanctions against Russia and the political conditions under which any eventual settlement is negotiated.

The Russian military problem has not disappeared

Nor is the argument taking place against a background of Russian demobilisation. Russia continues to devote enormous resources to its military establishment and has reorganised substantial parts of its economy around the requirements of prolonged confrontation, while European governments continue to warn about Russian cyber operations, sabotage, intelligence activity and other forms of pressure beyond the conventional battlefield.

These developments do not determine what Germany’s Russia policy ought to be. They do, however, establish the strategic environment in which the debate is occurring. Germany is not deciding how to organise relations with a Russia that has returned to the comparatively peaceful assumptions of the 1990s; it is considering these questions while Russia remains engaged in a vast war and confronts NATO across Europe’s eastern frontier.

That makes the consequences of German political change unusually serious. The argument about sanctions, military assistance and Russian energy is taking place while the conflict that produced those policies remains unresolved, rather than after a durable European security settlement has been achieved.

What Ukraine can do

Ukraine cannot determine German elections and should not attempt to do so. What she can do is recognise that German public opinion cannot be treated as permanently committed to unlimited support and that political consent for costly foreign policies must continually be maintained in democratic societies.

That means explaining not merely why Ukraine needs assistance but why supporting Ukraine serves German interests. The argument based exclusively upon moral solidarity is unlikely to be sufficient indefinitely, particularly during periods of economic difficulty, whereas the strategic argument may prove more durable.

If Ukrainian resistance substantially degrades Russia’s capacity to threaten the rest of Europe, Germany benefits. If Ukrainian defence industries can be integrated into European production networks, Germany may benefit economically and militarily. If Ukraine eventually becomes a stable member of European institutions, Germany gains a substantial European market and strategic partner.

Conversely, German voters sceptical of assistance are entitled to ask how much it will cost, how long commitments will continue and what political objective European governments are pursuing. Democratic governments cannot reasonably expect electorates to sign blank cheques, and treating every expression of scepticism as illegitimate risks making political opposition still more attractive.

Ukraine therefore needs arguments as well as weapons. The political contest over Germany’s future cannot be won in Kyiv, but Ukraine can contribute to it by articulating clearly why its survival and European integration are compatible with German strategic interests.

The larger German choice

The rise of the AfD does not mean that Germany is inevitably about to abandon Ukraine. The party does not presently control the federal government, coalition barriers remain formidable and German foreign policy is constrained by NATO membership, European institutions, parliamentary politics, industrial interests and Germany’s own security establishment.

Nevertheless, something important has changed. Positions that were once peripheral to German foreign-policy debate now command the support of a substantial political constituency. Ending or relaxing sanctions against Russia, restoring economic relations with Moscow, curtailing assistance to Ukraine and insisting upon some form of Ukrainian neutrality can no longer be dismissed as merely theoretical propositions.

For Ukraine, this should encourage neither panic nor complacency. Germany remains an essential partner, but democratic alliances are sustained by electorates, and electorates change their minds. Foreign policy that depends upon democratic governments must therefore survive democratic argument.

The ultimate significance of the AfD’s rise may consequently extend far beyond German arguments about migration, energy prices or dissatisfaction with Friedrich Merz. It poses a more fundamental question about what Germany believes its interests to be and whether those interests are best protected through confrontation with Russian revisionism or through some eventual reconstruction of economic and political relations with Moscow.

Since 2022, Berlin has increasingly defined German interests as requiring Ukrainian survival, resistance to Russian aggression and a stronger European defence architecture. The AfD offers a substantially different conception: German national interests pursued through restored economic relations with Russia, reduced confrontation between Moscow and Berlin and a neutral Ukraine excluded from NATO and potentially from the European Union.

Germany’s voters will ultimately determine the political future of those competing ideas. Ukraine will have no vote in that decision, but it will have to live with the consequences, which is precisely why the extraordinary transformation now taking place in German politics deserves such close attention in Kyiv.