The AfD has a Ukraine problem, and its leadership is pretending otherwise. Two cases inside the party are now colliding with the official line that Berlin should stop arming Kyiv and go back to doing business with Moscow.
A Bundestag Colonel Breaks With Kremlin-Friendly Framing
Ruediger Lucassen is in Kyiv right now. He is a Bundestag member, sits on the defense committee, and is a retired Bundeswehr colonel and former helicopter pilot. You would not expect that profile to describe Ukrainian morale as intact, but he met a veteran who fought, lost a relative at the front, and now has a son serving.
He saw what massed Russian air attacks actually hit: residential buildings, gas stations, industrial sites. His conclusion is that target selection cannot always be explained by military necessity, and that psychological pressure on civilians is part of the point. His own party pushes Kremlin-friendly framing, and this directly contradicts it.
A Former Propaganda Believer Takes Up Arms
Tim Schramm is deputy head of the AfD district organization in Wuppertal. He admits he used to hold pro-Russian views and believed Russian propaganda. Then he went to Ukraine on humanitarian missions, changed his position, and eventually volunteered to fight as a mortarman, drone operator, and territorial defense soldier.
The party leadership in North Rhine-Westphalia tried to expel him and stripped his membership rights. In November 2025 the party court reversed that. Now he has posted a four-minute video explaining why a German nationalist should support Ukraine, and the views are approaching half a million.
The difference is learning from reality rather than laundering Kremlin narratives from a distance.
The Strategic Argument the Party Cannot Absorb
Schramm's argument is not sentimental. If Russia is allowed to continue in Ukraine, Germany will pay later with its security, its resources, and potentially the lives of German citizens. Weapons for Ukraine are a strategic investment, a pragmatic investment in German defense.
The AfD establishment cannot absorb that part. Their official position remains opposition to arms deliveries and a push to restore relations with Moscow. But personal contact with the war keeps producing different conclusions.
- Lucassen went to Kyiv and saw a society determined to keep fighting.
- Schramm went further and picked up a weapon.
- The party leadership treats both as fringe cases rather than evidence of a structural contradiction.
The party can keep treating the dispute as a fringe matter. It isn't.