Putin's shadow across Europe grows as German far right wins

James Hertling, Bloomberg News on Sep 7, 2026

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The Alternative for Germany’s record election victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday marked a milestone not just for the far right but for Europe’s tilt toward Vladimir Putin.

The anti-immigration party known by its German acronym, AfD, has openly sympathized with the Russian president’s attempt to batter Ukraine into submission, even as he stepped up his aggression toward the European Union. Days before the vote, Germany blamed Russia for a failed drone attack at an airport in Leipzig last month.

Pressed about the connection between the AfD and Russia, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the result would clearly please the Kremlin. “The goal of the Russian leadership is the destabilization of the value system that we have called the West,” Merz told reporters in Berlin after meeting the party leadership on Monday. “And this value system is not up for discussion.”

But it’s not just Germany. In France and Italy, the second- and third-biggest E.U. countries, populist leaders are advocating policies toward Kyiv that echo Moscow’s talking points.

Jordan Bardella, president of France’s National Rally party, said his government’s unconditional support for Ukraine should be replaced by a more transactional relationship with the embattled country.

France’s tattered finances require squeezing a return in exchange for its military assistance to Kyiv, which has been resisting a Russian onslaught for more than four years, said the 30-year-old who is a likely prime minister if Marine Le Pen wins next year’s presidential vote. Le Pen consistently tops surveys for first-round voting intentions, causing fears among Ukraine’s allies that the support provided by President Emmanuel Macron could be at risk.

“We are drowning in debt. We are drowning in deficits. And it is irresponsible to make spending commitments and promises of financial support to a country without any guarantees,” Bardella told Bloomberg TV Saturday at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.

In Italy, Roberto Vannacci, an ultranationalist former army general, has been surging in the polls with a message to crack down on immigration and seek peace with Russia in Ukraine. A Sept. 4 Youtrend survey showed his National Future party as the second-strongest right-wing political group after Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

“The truth is never entirely on one side,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the event in Cernobbio Saturday. “Rather, there are a whole series of contributing factors that lead to these situations. And we need to examine them very pragmatically and objectively.”

To be sure, the AfD’s endorsement of large-scale expulsions of foreigners has left it isolated from French and Italian peers. Le Pen ended cooperation with the party in 2024 after an AfD lawmaker said in an interview that not every Nazi SS member should be considered a criminal. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy has embraced transatlantic ties, has kept her distance given the AfD’s closeness to Russia.

Yet with potential allies nearing the centers of power in the capitals of Europe’s three biggest nations, Russia is showing no inclination to curtail its aggression.

“The parties that are sort of blind to this threat and say that we should not do anything with this because it’s not our concern, are gaining ground,” the E.U.’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, told reporters Monday in Vilnius. “So I’m just afraid that we might, you know, wake up in a situation where we haven’t done enough to be able to deter the threats and defend ourselves.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Germany of moving toward a direct confrontation with Russia as he criticized Berlin’s decision to close some diplomatic offices after a drone incident at Leipzig airport.

“In general, this is, broadly speaking, kind of the beginning of a real war,” Lavrov said in comments published on Telegram by Russian state TV channel Vesti.

—With assistance from Donato Paolo Mancini, Samy Adghirni, Francine Lacqua, Arne Delfs and Max Ramsay.