A scene from a video interview with pro-Russian activist Vladimir Sergienko on the internet
Foto: Overton Magazin; DER SPIEGELThe Kremlin's Friends in Berlin Secret Messages Document Moscow Contacts with Staffer of Far-Right AfD
Two days after his arrival at Russia's Vnukovo airport, Vladimir Sergienko contacted a mysterious person. "I'm in Moscow," the pro-Russian activist, who is also a staffer for a German parliamentarian from far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, wrote on a Friday back in March. "Let's meet next week," his contact responded.
When Sergienko returned to the Russian capital the following month, he again wrote to his contact. They arranged to meet at 3 p.m. in a cafe. Sergienko asked the contact if he should order dessert for him before he arrived at the meeting. "No, I'll have a tea," the contact answered.
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 32/2023 (August 5th, 2023) of DER SPIEGEL.
The exchange, written in Russian, is part of a record that includes Sergienko's emails, documents and messages. The documents were leaked to DER SPIEGEL and the investigative platform The Insider.
At first glance, the communication seems like harmless banter between acquaintances. But before long, formulations begin to appear that even Western intelligence agencies may find interesting. "Has anything happened in terms of active measures?" the mysterious contact asked a few weeks later. "Not easy, but we're getting there," Sergienko replied.
"Active measures" is the term Russia has used for clandestine attempts to influence the policies of other countries through disinformation, propaganda and other dishonest methods since Soviet times. And that is precisely the kind of operation described in the documents supplied to DER SPIEGEL. They indicate that Germany was the target.
AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel in Moscow in 2021
Foto: Ulf Mauder / picture alliance / dpaThe documents indicate that Sergienko, together with members of the AfD parliamentary group in Berlin, was apparently preparing a legal complaint against German arms deliveries to Ukraine – and was hoping for Russian help. His messages also state that "financial support" would also be welcome. The goal of the action is stated bluntly in the documents: "The government's work is to be made more difficult. It's a win-win situation." Even if the lawsuit fails, he said, German tank deliveries could perhaps be delayed by a month or two.
It would be easy to dismiss the messages between Sergienko, who lives in Berlin, and his Moscow contact as some kind of wacky fantasy were it not for the fact that the AfD made a strikingly similar move only four months later. On July 4, the parliamentary group of the far-right party filed a complaint against the government in the Federal Constitutional Court.
The AfD justified its move by saying that the government should never have supplied tanks and other war equipment to Ukraine without the agreement of the federal parliament, the Bundestag. Speaking at a specially scheduled press conference, senior AfD parliamentarian Stephan Brandner described the government's action as being "highly problematic." The rule in the past, he said, had been "no arms deliveries to war and crisis zones." Lawyer Ulrich Vosgerau, who is representing the AfD parliamentary group in the case before Germany's highest court, sat next to him.
Although there are certainly coincidences in life, this one would be pretty big.
The incident also evokes memories of a similar case: Years ago, a young AfD politician named Markus Frohnmaier drew attention to himself because of his close ties to Vladimir Putin's Russia. DER SPIEGEL and other media reported on documents from the Moscow power apparatus indicating that the Russians had high hopes for him in the 2017 election year. "We will have our own absolutely controlled MP in the Bundestag," one document stated. Another document that fell into the hands of a European intelligence agency requested "material and media support" for Frohnmaier's election campaign from Moscow. At the time, the AfD politician denied receiving any assistance from Russia, saying he had no explanation for the compromising formulations. He is still a member of the Bundestag today.
DER SPIEGEL's investigation into the Sergienko case is now once again raising the question of whether the AfD has allowed itself to become Putin's tool. If the far-right group has indeed received support from Moscow for its lawsuit – in the form of ideas or financial assistance – it would represent a new dimension of proximity to Russia. And it would mean the AfD has allowed itself to be enlisted as part of an influence operation designed to give Russia an advantage in a war it has waged in violation of international law.
The party would finally be exposed as what many have long believed it to be: A Moscow proxy.
Full Access To the German Parliament
Vladimir Sergienko, 52, has been in the sights of Germany security authorities for some time now. The author and activist, who was born in Ukraine during the Soviet era, can be seen spreading propaganda during frequent appearances on Russian state television. The Ukrainian authorities placed him on a sanctions list earlier this year in response.
Sergienko is nonetheless free to come and go as he pleases at the Bundestag in Berlin. As a staffer for pro-Kremlin AfD parliamentarian Eugen Schmidt, he has full access to parliament.
AfD politician Eugen Schmidt holds up a sign in 2017 with his party's name written in cyrillic text.
Foto: Jasper Juinen / Bloomberg / Getty ImagesReporting by DER SPIEGEL shows that Sergienko has established a dense network of contacts with Kremlin apologists in Germany in recent years. The network also includes Jürgen Elsässer, the editor and publisher of the far-right magazine Compact and an ardent Putin admirer.
At Elsässer's "Peace with Russia" congress planned for this coming autumn, Sergienko is slated to be one of the keynote speakers. "No sanctions, no weapons, no NATO troops," reads the subtitle of the conference. Sergienko also apparently plans to report from Moscow for the right-wing extremist magazine in the future: A request for his accreditation has been submitted to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Elsässer didn't answer a request for comment on the matter.
Sergienko has particularly close ties with Ulrich Oehme, an AfD member in the eastern state of Saxony who employed him in his constituency during his time as a member of the Bundestag between 2017 and 2021. On Telegram, Sergienko refers to Oehme as "my friend."
Hardcore Putin Apologists
Oehme is among the most hardcore of the AfD's Putin apologists. A few months after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, he, Schmidt and other politicians with the far-right party founded the Association for the Defense Against Discrimination and the Exclusion of Russian Germans and Russian-Speaking Fellow Citizens in Germany (VADAR). He opposes allegedly widespread "Russophobia" in Germany and denies Moscow's war atrocities on Telegram. Sergineko is also active on that front.
What seems even more remarkable is the people Sergienko has connections with in Russia. In July, he reportedly met with representatives of the Foundation for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, an organization established through a decree issued by the Russian president. The organization has been on the EU sanctions list since the end of June for its attempts to divide societies in other countries.
In its reporting, DER SPIEGEL found that Sergienko's network includes important propagandists like Margarita Simonyan, the head of the television channel RT, and Vladimir Solovyov, the host of one of the nastiest and most inflammatory shows on Russian state television. But he also appears to maintain contacts with numerous members of the Russian parliament, the Duma, including Maria Butina, who was convicted in the United States as an agent of Moscow and later deported to Russia, where she began a political career.
It's a rather dazzling circle of acquaintances.
The closeness of Vladimir Sergienko's connections to Russia is also shown by Russian border-crossing data. It shows that he has traveled to Russia about two dozen times in the past three years. He also flew to Moscow the day before Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Since then, he has visited the country at least 17 times, traveling mostly via Turkey, since no direct flights are permitted from Russia to the European Union.
In Russian documents, Sergienko also appears to have a residential address in the Moscow's Zamoskvorechye district. The "employer" listed is a Russian Defense Ministry propaganda station on whose shows he sometimes appears by video from Berlin, with the Bundestag in the background.
Propagandist Sergienko in a live appearance from Berlin for one of the Russian Defense Ministry's stations
When traveling to Moscow, Sergienko now often uses his Russian passport, issued three months after the start of the war, a document the German authorities are also now interested in. When Sergienko became a naturalized German citizen in November 2022, the officials were only aware of his Ukrainian passport; they knew nothing about his apparent Russian citizenship.
Sergienko also used his Russian passport to travel to Moscow in the spring, ahead of meetings with the ominous contact person who has now made his case so explosive. It isn't clear who the person is or which Russian authority the individual is acting on behalf of. In the exchanges, the person is referred to in some instances as "Alena," but the contact is more likely to be a man.
Sergienko's Russian passport
Western intelligence agencies suspect it could be a Russian spy who is acting as Sergienko's handler. This is also supported by telephone records from a Russian database showing the contact apparently communicates on a mobile phone that he uses almost exclusively for conversations with Sergienko. The phone is likely registered to an in-between, a common cover-up tactic used by Russian intelligence services.
It's striking that Sergienko often sends information about pro-Kremlin members of parliament with the AfD. Money is also addressed in the communications. According to the documents, the AfD wanted to hire a renowned law firm that charges 450 euros an hour for its lawsuit against the German arms deliveries. All in all, one stated, there would likely be 25,000 euros per month in legal fees, plus another 10,000 euros. Members of the Bundestag prepared the legal action. Sergienko is described in the documents as a "trustee." He appears to be a kind of middleman between Moscow and the AfD.
The data also could cast new light on an incident that took place at the German border. When Sergienko returned from a trip to Russia in April, customs officials inspected him and discovered 9,000 euros in cash. In June, Sergienko was reported to have been stopped at the border again on his return journey, and he is once again said to have had 9,000 euros in his baggage. With that amount, he was only just below the limit of 10,000 euros at which point a person is required to register the cash they are carrying with the authorities.
Was the money earmarked for a Russian influence operation in Germany? Was the project described in the documents actually the lawsuit the AfD presented at a press conference in July?
The AfD's parliamentary group in the Bundestag denies the link. They claim that their legal department and legal representative Ulrich Vosgerau prepared the complaint and that the parliamentary group covered the costs. Eugen Schmidt and other members of parliament with proximity to Sergienko, the AfD claims, had nothing to do with the proceedings. The parliamentary group said it was unaware of the events described by DER SPIEGEL.
Lawyer Vosgerau provided the same account. He said that he introduced the idea to the parliamentary group of filing a complaint with the constitutional court, that he doesn't know Sergienko and has "absolutely nothing to do" with Russia or Putin. He also said that the legal complaint could not lead to a delay in arms deliveries – it would merely result in a ruling on whether the rights of the Bundestag had been violated.
The question of how it came to be that Sergienko sought help at the same time from Moscow for an AfD lawsuit against German arms deliveries remains an open one. Sergienko left concrete questions unanswered. "Yes, I maintain diverse contacts with people of various stripes, but no, that does not make me a master spy," Sergienko informed DER SPIEGEL. "Yes, I was present in Russian media, but I'm not a mouthpiece for any propaganda." He denies having provided financial support to the AfD, as well as the suspicion that he is acting on behalf of Russian state agencies.
AfD politician Schmidt, for whom the pro-Russian activist works in the Bundestag, said he could not "comment on conjectures about Mr. Sergienko and his alleged Moscow meetings." He said he knew nothing about any of this. Besides, he added, he couldn't "supervise every step taken by my staff."