The United States rather than Russia: “Heading West” for the German far right
Since Donald Trump's return to power, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been moving away from the Kremlin and closer to Washington. This controversial shift in strategy is intended to convince more voters in western Germany to vote for the far-right party, according to the centrist weekly Der Spiegel.
The “devil’s cellist” finally gave up. Matthias Moosdorf, a renowned musician turned politician, would have liked to keep his position as spokesperson for the parliamentary group of the [far-right] Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Bundestag, on foreign policy issues. But when it came to the internal vote, the cellist was rejected by his fellow MPs – whose numbers have exploded since the last legislative elections [152 seats obtained in 2025 in the lower house of the German Parliament compared to 83 in 2021].
Moosdorf tried again, hoping to at least secure a seat on his party's foreign affairs working group, but in each round of voting, he was overtaken by another candidate. So much so that he threw in the towel just before the vote for the tenth and final place.
The cellist once gave concerts in Russia, accepted an honorary professorship in Moscow, and showed understanding toward Putin after the invasion of Ukraine. For a long time, affinities with Russia posed little problem within the AfD—on the contrary, they were considered a sign of foreign policy expertise.
Many members of the party have traveled to Russia to meet
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