Putin confidant calls far-right AfD the 'hope for Germans'

Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin envoy responsible for Russia's business relations with other countries, has welcomed the high approval ratings of the far-right Alternative of Germany (AfD) ahead of elections in three German states.

"AfD became HOPE for Germans," Dmitriev wrote on X on Friday evening in response to results of a survey in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern that were shared by AfD leader Alice Weidel.

According to the poll by Infratest dimap, the party is well ahead of its rivals with 36% of the vote.

Dmitriev is a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As Putin's chief negotiator in the war in Ukraine, he advocated for an improvement in relations with the US under President Donald Trump, while lashing out against Europe and Kiev.

For Dirk Wiese, faction leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SDP) in the German parliament, the comment from within the Kremlin "clearly shows what a disastrous alliance is working together to dismantle the European Union and our democracy."

"It is clear: anyone who votes for the AfD will one day wake up in Putin's Russia. Then it will no longer be the [German] chancellor who sets the agenda, but the war criminal Vladimir Putin," Wiese told dpa. "The AfD is Putin's Trojan horse on the continent."

This is not the first time Dmitriev has publicly spoken out in support of the AfD, rated in several recent opinion polls as Germany’s most popular party, ahead of the conservative alliance led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The party is performing so well because it stands "against uncontrolled immigration, lies and censorship," he wrote last October of new poll results.

Elections will be held in the city-state of Berlin and the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony in September. In the latter two, the AfD is by far the strongest force in the polls, but it is unclear whether it could secure enough support to govern alone, while mainstream parties continue to rule out coalition partnerships.