Putin supports Russian cooperation with the German Alternative for Germany party
Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended meetings between Russian officials and representatives of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Speaking at a meeting with representatives of major international news agencies, in St. Petersburg, Putin said, “We’ll cooperate with anyone who wants to cooperate with Russia… We don’t see any signs of neo-Nazism in the AfD’s actions”.
Putin said it was true that there were no regular relations with the opposition party in Germany, but if someone was working to establish normal relations with Russia, Moscow supported it, noting that Russia wasn’t interested in assessing whether a political force was operating within the framework of the constitution.
Putin criticized the declaration of representatives of alternative views in Germany as opponents of the state, saying, “Every alternative point of view is treated as an anti-state position… Everyone is immediately described as agents of the Kremlin”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was previously hosted by the AfD co-chairman, Tino Shrubala, in Moscow as an official guest.
The media meeting, held at the stunning skyscraper in the Lachta center of Russian gas giant Gazprom, is the first international meeting of its kind since the beginning of the Russian war against Ukraine.
