From Moscow to MAGA
AfD’s Markus Frohnmaier and the Transnational Far-Right Convergence
Markus Frohnmaier, a German far-right politician, attended and was honoured at a MAGA-aligned gala in New York, where he called for a formal alliance between American and German nationalist movements and portrayed it as a threat to “liberal elites” and a hope for the “free world”.
He also met a senior US State Department official and echoed US criticism of Europe’s political trajectory. Frohnmaier said he had invited American officials and lawmakers to attend a nationalist congress in Germany next February.
Frohnmaier is the foreign policy spokesperson of the federal parliamentary group of the German far-right “Alternative for Germany” (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). His apparent partnership with American anti-EU forces is hardly surprising, given his participation in multiple pro-Kremlin efforts.
I detailed Frohnmaier’s contacts with Russian operatives and various pro-Russian agents in my book Russian Political Warfare, and here I am revisiting what I wrote about Frohnmaier.
In early April 2019, a joint investigation by the BBC, Der Spiegel, ZDF, and La Repubblica revealed that Russian stakeholders had considered supporting Frohnmaier as a candidate in the 2017 German parliamentary elections. The investigation was based on two documents. One was a letter sent by Petr Premyak, an assistant to Russian MP Viktor Shreider, which suggested that officials responsible for foreign policy matters at the Russian Presidential Administration consider providing support to Frohnmaier. The other document, apparently written by Ochsenreiter, outlined Frohnmaier’s election campaign and requested Russian support.
Frohnmaier has been in contact with Russian actors at least since 2014. That year, he became acquainted with Daniil Bisslinger, who at the time was an attaché in the foreign policy office of the Russian Embassy in Germany.
Since then, his involvement with various Russian stakeholders has only grown.
In March 2015, Frohnmaier was a guest at a meeting of the association “Franco-Russian Dialogue”, co-chaired by then Russian Railways CEO Vladimir Yakunin and French pro-Russian right-wing politician Thierry Mariani, who at the time was a member of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un mouvement populaire, UMP).
In April 2015, Frohnmaier took part in a meeting in Belgrade with the leaders of the youth organisation of the Russian ruling party “United Russia”, Alexander Galkin and Vladislav Artyomov. The meeting was hosted by Serbian far-right politician Miroslav Parović and also featured Pierre Gentillet from Mariani’s more nationalist wing of the UMP.
The late German far-right journalist Manuel Ochsenreiter, who was notorious for his openly pro-Russian views, had known Frohnmaier since at least 2015 and apparently saw significant potential in the young far-right politician. As Ochsenreiter’s own ties to Moscow developed, he presumably decided to introduce Frohnmaier to his pro-Kremlin network via Mateusz Piskorski, who was later charged in Poland with, and remains formally accused of, espionage for Russia and China.
On 7 March 2016, Piskorski sent a message to Sargis Mirzakhanian, one of his Russian handlers who coordinated various information operations, and to Mirzakhanian’s assistant, Stepan Mantsurov, in which he described Frohnmaier as “our candidate”. The message also included an article from Die Zeit reporting on Frohnmaier’s pro-Russian activism.
All subsequent developments suggest that Mirzakhanian and his team became interested in Frohnmaier. After his introduction to the Russian operatives, Frohnmaier was promptly invited to take part in the Second Yalta International Economic Forum, held in April 2016 in Russia-annexed Crimea, alongside several European politicians invited by Mirzakhanian’s team. These included AfD MEP Marcus Pretzell, Austrian MPs Axel Kassegger and Barbara Rosenkranz of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, Czech far-left MEP Jaromír Kohlíček, and Italian regional far-right politician Stefano Valdegamberi.
According to the above-mentioned joint investigation, on 3 April 2017 Petr Premyak sent a message to Sergey Sokolov, who at the time worked in the foreign policy department of the Russian Presidential Administration. The message included a six-page attachment in Russian titled “Foreign Policy Activities”, which, as the message implied, was to be considered by the then head of the department, Alexander Manzhosin. At the same time, Mirzakhanian’s assistant, Alexander Kirpichev, was to provide further details on the proposed projects.
The authors of the six-page document proposed organising protests in the EU to discredit those who stood “in opposition to the foreign policy trends of the Russian Federation”, lobbying for the lifting of “anti-Russian sanctions” with the help of European actors, and establishing closer ties with friendly European political forces.
Crucially, the document also included a section on Frohnmaier, stating that he had a strong chance of being elected to the Bundestag in the 2017 German parliamentary elections and required support for his campaign. As the authors put it, the aim of the endeavour was straightforward: “We will have our own absolutely controlled MP in the Bundestag”. They also promised to provide a detailed programme for Frohnmaier’s electoral campaign “by the end of the next week”.
The following week, on 11 April 2017, Ochsenreiter drew up a document titled “Frohnmaier election campaign / action plan (draft)”. The document called for providing “material” and “media support” for Frohnmaier’s electoral campaign, stating that during the campaign the candidate would emphasise the following themes: “German independence and sovereignty”, “good relations with the Russian Federation”, “conservatism”, and “criticism towards the US”.
The document also stated that Frohnmaier, as a Bundestag MP, would “immediately start operating in the field of international policy” and would “be ready for cooperation in various fields of German-Russian relations”. It further envisaged that Frohnmaier would head international delegations to Crimea, Donbass, and Russian regions, and would appear frequently in Russian media.
On the same day, 11 April 2017, Mirzakhanian sent Ochsenreiter’s draft of Frohnmaier’s campaign plan to an email address likely shared by himself and currently unidentified members of his team.
There is no evidence that Ochsenreiter’s “action plan” for Frohnmaier’s election campaign was implemented by any Russian stakeholders. Nevertheless, Frohnmaier was elected to the Bundestag in 2017.
Still earlier, in May 2016, Frohnmaier participated in a coordinated influence operation that led Russian media to report on an AfD initiative to lift “anti-Russian sanctions” in Baden-Württemberg. Although presented as the political position of Frohnmaier and his AfD colleague Udo Stein, the statements attributed to Frohnmaier were drafted by Ochsenreiter, who prepared the parliamentary questions, press-style texts, and supporting materials. These documents were then channelled by Piskorski to Mirzakhanian, enabling their dissemination through Russian media.
On the same day, Mirzakhanian sent Russian translations of Ochsenreiter’s documents to his contacts in the Russian media, adding that Stein and Frohnmaier would hold a press conference on the need to lift the “anti-Russian sanctions” on 11 May and providing Frohnmaier’s phone number so that Russian media could request additional information from him.
Notably, a little less than a year later, Frohnmaier married the author of the story about him and Stein, Russian journalist Daria Tsoy, which was published in the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestiya. The subsequent personal connection between Frohnmaier and a Russian journalist involved in disseminating pro-Russian narratives raises additional questions about the broader context in which these interactions took place.
After his election to the Bundestag, Frohnmaier continued to be engaged in pro-Kremlin activities, including participation in a sham “observation mission” for the 2018 Russian presidential election.
Frohnmaier also consistently took positions favourable to Russia, including opposing EU sanctions and advocating closer relations with Moscow during his time in the Bundestag.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he publicly criticised German military assistance to Ukraine, rejected characterising Russia as a threat to Germany, and called for negotiations and an end to Russia’s isolation. In late 2025, he announced plans to visit Russia in order to “keep channels open”, before later stating that there were no concrete travel plans. The announcement nonetheless drew sharp criticism from other German parties and security figures, who viewed such initiatives as potentially dangerous given Russia’s ongoing war.
Frohnmaier’s rapprochement with the American MAGA movement signals more than an interest on the part of American elites in cooperating with anti-EU forces. Given Frohnmaier’s close and long-standing ties to a wide range of Russian operatives, he has now become yet another bridge of influence through which the Kremlin can channel its reach towards MAGA, thereby further strengthening illiberal transatlantic alliances.
brilliant, as always. keep digging — it will save many innocent people's lives.
It's as if there is a group of psychopaths who got hold of a state (Russia) that attracts all those psychopaths you meet only on X.com.