section_path: Ideology and platform/Foreign policy/Russia and the United States
section_name: Russia and the United States
paragraph_text: Russia and the United States
  
  While AfD had been pro- NATO and pro-United States during the first Trump administration, it had been sharply critical of the Biden administration. It was significantly divided on whether to support Russia, but has since moved to a pro-Russian direction, opposing sanctions on Russia supported by NATO and the United States and calling for an end to military aid to Ukraine. It is also divided on free-trade agreements. In March 2019, party leader Alexander Gauland said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that they consider the war in Donbas to be a Ukrainian internal matter, and that Germany should not get involved in the internal affairs of Ukraine or Russia. He also said AfD is against international sanctions on Russia. AfD members have called for a more independent stance from the United States. The party has also endorsed accusations that the United States was involved in the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. AfD has also called NATO's anti-Russian stance overly ideological and detrimental to Germany's interests. A large number of AfD delegates boycotted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June 2024 when he gave a speech to the Bundestag. In February 2025, some high-ranking AfD members criticized Chrupalla's pro-Moscow position on foreign policy.
  
  An Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation from February 2023 found evidence that AfD is a key ally for the International Agency for Current Policy, an organization established by Russian parliamentary staffer Sargis Mirzakhanian whose internal documents describe it as a "closed association of professionals" engaged in a variety of pro-Russian activities. These include organizing street protests against NATO, bringing European delegations to Moscow and Crimea, and targeting "national parliaments of the EU" with resolutions to end EU sanctions on Russia and to grant recognition to Russia's annexation of Crimea. Internal emails, including some from Mirzakhanyan, document substantial payments to EU politicians made in exchange for pro-Kremlin motions in their home countries, and to Manuel Ochsenreiter for publishing pro-Russian propaganda in his Zuerst! magazine.
  
  In August 2023 a journalist investigation was published by The Insider, describing how money was funnelled from Moscow to AfD politicians who initiated a constitutional complaint in Germany against the supplies of weapons for Ukraine. The AfD supported peace negotiations on the Russo-Ukrainian War with the participation of Russia.