Shortly before last weekend’s German elections, Elon Musk predicted on his X platform that “it is only a matter of time before AfD wins.”

The extreme right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) party, which many observers consider neo-fascist, did not win the 2025 election. But it did win over 10.3 million votes, or 20.8 percent of the vote. In capturing 152 seats in the Bundestag, it is now Germany’s second-largest parliamentary party.

AfD has in recent years become increasingly supportive of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The party opposed sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and has called for an end to military support for Kyiv. It has become increasingly hostile to NATO, calling the alliance detrimental to German interests. When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Bundestag last June, AfD boycotted his speech. Several news outlets have reported that AfD, or at least some of its members, is on the monetary take from Moscow.

There has long been a pro-Russian streak among a certain portion of the German populace and its leaders. With 1922’s

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