German AfD Pledges Renewed Energy Ties with Russia

Germany's resurgent anti-globalist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), says they will restore energy links with Russia

The Nord Stream pipeline will be re-opened — said chancellor candidate and (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel. The sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines will go back into operation if her party wins Germany's general election next month.

AfD members met in the town of Riesa on Saturday to approve Weidel as their candidate to replace Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose coalition government collapsed last year. Weidel’s nomination marks the right-wing AfD’s first bid for the chancellery in its 11-year history.

In a speech after her nomination, Weidel promised to implement tough immigration policies – including the “re-migration” of immigrants living legally in Germany – and to scrap the outgoing Scholz’s green policies, in a bid to cut energy costs. Restoring energy ties with Russia is vital, she explained.

“We will put Nord Stream back in operation, you can count on it,” Weidel told her party. 

Germany is facing its longest recession. Germany relied on Russia for 55% of its natural gas before the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. Much of the gas flowed through the Nord Stream 1 pipelines, with the parallel Nord Stream 2 lines due to come online in 2022. However, Berlin revoked the certification for Nord Stream 2 several days before Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began, and most of the lines were destroyed in an act of sabotage in September of that year.

While German investigators have settled on the theory that the pipelines were destroyed by Ukrainian saboteurs, US journalist Seymour Hersh maintains they were blown up by the CIA and US Navy. The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has blamed “professional saboteurs from the Anglo-American special services,” referring to the US and UK. 

Scholz’s decision to halt Russian energy imports, coupled with his government’s green policies, led to soaring electricity costs, forcing some of Germany's manufacturing giants – including Volkswagen and BASF – to close plants and lay off workers.

The AfD is not the only German party that wants to repair and reopen Nord Stream. The leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) has also demanded that they be brought back online, with BSW MP Sevim Dagdelen calling last week for the gas lines to “finally be put into operation,” and for the German government to “stop giving money to Kiev!”

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Germans go to the polls to choose a new government on February 23. The AfD is currently polling at around 20%, ahead of Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) at 16%, but behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at 31%. However, even if the AfD were to emerge as the largest party next month, all of Germany’s other mainstream parties have ruled out entering a coalition with it. END #
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