BERLIN — Far-right German politician Ringo Mühlmann has taken a noteworthy interest in exposing information his political opponents say could be of great interest to Russian intelligence.
Using the rights afforded to him as a lawmaker for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the parliament of the eastern German state of Thuringia — where the AfD is the strongest party — Mühlmann has repeatedly asked the regional government to disclose intricate details on subjects such as local drone defenses and Western arms transports to Ukraine.
“What information does the state government have about the extent of military transit transports through Thuringia since 2022 (broken down by year, type of transport [road, rail], number of transits, and known stops)?” Mühlmann asked in writing in September.
One day in June, Mühlmann — who denies he is doing Russia’s bidding — filed eight inquiries related to drones and the drone defense capabilities of the region’s police, who are responsible for detecting and fending off drones deemed a spy threat.
“What technical systems for drone defense are known to the Thuringian police (e.g., jammers, net launchers, electromagnetic pulse devices), and to what extent have these been tested for their usability in law enforcement?” Mühlmann asked.
Such questions from AfD lawmakers on the state and federal parliaments have led German centrists to accuse the far-right party’s lawmakers of using their seats to try to expose sensitive information that Moscow could use in its war on Ukraine and to help carry out its so-called “hybrid war” against Europe.
“One cannot help but get the impression that the AfD is working through a list of tasks assigned to it by the Kremlin with its inquiries,” Thuringian Interior Minister Georg Maier, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), told German newspaper Handelsblatt.
“What struck me was an incredible interest in critical infrastructure and the security authorities here in Thuringia, especially how they deal with hybrid threats,” Maier subsequently told POLITICO. “Suddenly, geopolitical issues are playing a role in their questions, while we in the Thuringian state parliament are not responsible for foreign policy or defense policy.”
AfD leaders frequently take positions favorable to the Kremlin, favoring a renewal of economic ties and gas imports and a cease of weapons aid for Ukraine. Their political opponents, however, have frequently accused them of acting not from conviction alone — but at the behest of Moscow. Greens lawmaker Irene Mihalic, for instance, last month called the party Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “trojan horse” in Germany.
AfD politicians deny allegations they are using their rising parliamentary power both nationally and in Germany’s states to try to pass on sensitive information to the Kremlin.
Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD’s national leaders, strongly pushed back against the allegations his party is attempting to reveal arms supply routes to benefit the Kremlin.
“Citizens have legitimate fears about what they see and experience on the highways every evening,” he said in a talk show last month when asked about Mühlmann’s inquiries. “These are all legitimate questions from a member of parliament who is concerned and who takes the concerns and needs of citizens seriously. You are making insinuations, which is quite perfidious; you are accusing us of things that you can never prove.”
Mühlmann, a former police officer, speaking to POLITICO, denied that he’s following an assignment list “in the direction of Russia.”
Government ministers, while obligated to answer each parliamentary inquiry, are not obliged to reveal sensitive or classified information that could endanger national security, Mühlmann also argued.
“It is not up to me to limit my questions, but up to the minister to provide the answers,” he said. “If at some point such an answer poses a danger or leads to espionage, then the espionage is not my fault, but the minister’s, because he has disclosed information that he should not have disclosed.”
Marc Henrichmann, a conservative lawmaker and the chairman of a special committee in Germany’s Bundestag that oversees the country’s intelligence services, said that while the government is not obliged to divulge classified or highly sensitive information in its answers to parliamentary questions, Russian intelligence services can still piece together valuable insights from the sheer volume and variety of AfD inquiries.
“Apart from insignificant inquiries and sensitive inquiries, there is also a huge gray area,” Henrichmann said. “And what I have regularly heard from various ministries is that individual inquiries are not really the problem. But when you look at these individual inquiries side by side, you get a picture, for example, of travel routes, aid supplies, and military goods to or in the direction of Ukraine.”
Henrichmann said AfD parliamentary questions in the Bundestag on subjects such as authorities’ knowledge of Russian sabotage and hybrid activities in the Baltic Sea region as well as of the poisoning of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had caught his attention and raised concerns.
AfD factions in German state parliaments have submitted more than 7,000 security-related inquiries since the beginning of 2020, according to a data analysis by Spiegel — more than any other party and about one-third of all security-related inquiries combined.
In Thuringia — where state intelligence authorities have labelled the AfD an extremist group — the party has submitted nearly 70 percent (1,206 out of 1,738) of all questions filed this legislative period. In the Bundestag, the parties parliamentary questions account for more than 60 percent of all inquiries (636 out of 1,052).
The AfD’s strategic use of parliamentary questions is nothing new, experts say. Since entering the Bundestag in 2017, the party has deployed them to flood ministries and to gather information on perceived political adversaries, experts say
“From the outset, the AfD has used parliamentary questions to obstruct, paralyze, and also to monitor political enemies,” said Anna-Sophie Heinze, a researcher at the University of Trier.
With regard to the flood of inquiries related to national security, the question of what is driving the AfD is largely irrelevant, Jakub Wondreys, a researcher at the Technical University Dresden who studies the AfD’s Russia policy, said.
“It’s not impossible that they’re acting on behalf of Kremlin. It’s also possible that they are acting on behalf of themselves, because, of course, they are pro-Kremlin. But the end result is pretty much the same. These questions are a potential threat to national security.”