“The AfD, which frequently takes positions favorable to Russia, has developed an interest in last year's ‘Hedgehog 2025’ exercise, a major NATO operation in Estonia, in which Ukrainian drone specialists used tactics learned on the battlefield to ‘destroy’ NATO units in a war game,” the article said.
Politico cited a Feb. 19 letter from Rudiger Lucassen, the AfD’s defense spokesman, in which he asked the government to brief the Bundestag’s defense committee on “capability gaps” identified during the exercise. The letter sought information on “in the areas of counter-drone defense, electronic warfare, command capability, and the protection of mobile forces” and asked when those gaps would be addressed.
The request has alarmed members of the governing coalition, who say such details could be of interest to Moscow.
“With some of the AfD’s motions and questions, the question increasingly arises as to what purpose they actually serve, and whose interests are being pursued,” Florian Dorn, a member of the Bundestag’s defense committee from the ruling CDU bloc, told Politico.
“If such information falls into the wrong hands, it endangers our security and defense capability.”
Lucassen rejected suggestions that his party had ulterior motives, saying the request was “a routine tool of parliamentary oversight.”
In 2025, Thuringia’s interior minister, Georg Maier, accused
the AfD of using parliamentary questions to “systematically gather intelligence
on critical infrastructure.” In an interview with Handelsblatt,
he said the party appeared to be paving the way to carry out “tasks from the
Kremlin.”