The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is in a bitter internal fight over conscription, and the anti-Nato, pro-Moscow wing is winning. Rüdiger Lucassen — a 74-year-old former Bundeswehr colonel and ex-helicopter pilot, and one of the most pro-American figures in the party — stepped down as AfD defence spokesperson after eight years, days before colleagues were due to vote on removing him. He was replaced by Jan Nolte, a western Hesse MP who, as recently as 2024, gave interviews to Izvestia, the Russian paper co-founded by one of Vladimir Putin's closest friends.

Conscription was suspended in Germany in 2011. On paper, the AfD favours reintroducing it; in practice, at a recent party retreat, the leadership decided to dodge the topic entirely. The flag-bearer of the AfD's ethnonationalist wing, Björn Höcke, led the backlash — telling the Thuringia parliament to imagine their sons and grandsons blown up on a foreign battlefield, and refusing to support conscription in a country that, in his words, had nothing worth defending but "drag queen performances in kindergartens", deindustrialisation, mass immigration and wartime guilt. The eastern faction, where sympathy for Russia and suspicion of the US run highest, has the electoral muscle — the AfD polls up to 40% in parts of the east, is tracking first in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and could take Saxony-Anhalt in September.

Founded in 2013 during the eurozone crisis, the AfD has radicalised rather than moderated as it has grown — landing a record second place (21%) in last year's federal elections. Some western MPs still back Chancellor Friedrich Merz's rearmament and defence minister Boris Pistorius, but the line from several eastern members of the Bundestag is that military sovereignty should not be "top priority" while spending needs to be cut, and that Russia is not really an opponent. Source: Financial Times, 18 April 2026, Laura Pitel (with additional reporting by Max Seddon).