BSW and AfD Target Germany’s Ukraine Aid in Saxony-Anhalt Election Push

This proposes an experiment in something broader: whether a single issue can provide a bridge across Germany’s fragmented political spectrum that formal alliances still cannot build.

The Bundesrat as a pressure point

Foreign policy and defence procurement remain federal responsibilities. A resolution adopted by the Saxony-Anhalt Landtag therefore cannot simply order Berlin to stop sending weapons or money to Ukraine.

The Bundesrat creates a different kind of leverage. Germany’s 16 states participate in federal legislation through their state governments, which send delegates to the upper house. Those governments can therefore affect federal legislation, including areas touching security policy and public finances.

BSW’s strategy is to use control of a state government - or influence over one - to change how its Bundesrat delegation votes. The immediate parliamentary motion in Magdeburg is consequently less important as a legal instrument than as a political mechanism for forcing the issue into state coalition negotiations and federal decision-making.

That distinction matters. The proposed resolution would not create an automatic veto over military assistance to Ukraine. But if parties opposed to aid acquire enough influence over a state government, they can use the Bundesrat to obstruct legislation within the chamber’s remit and increase the political cost of maintaining Berlin’s policy.

The regional election thus becomes connected to a federal security question.

This is precisely the institutional opening BSW is seeking.

A firewall tested one vote at a time

Germany’s political system has long treated cooperation with the AfD as a boundary that mainstream parties should not cross. In Saxony-Anhalt, the problem is becoming harder to contain as the AfD’s electoral strength grows.

The state’s AfD is classified by Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation. Yet BSW does not need a formal coalition with it to alter the parliamentary arithmetic.

Its model is more tactical.

BSW leader Sahra Wagenknecht has advocated an “above-party minister-president” approach in eastern Germany, relying on flexible parliamentary majorities that can include AfD votes. Her party’s campaign in Saxony-Anhalt illustrates how such an arrangement could operate in practice: cooperation on a defined issue without a formal governing pact.

The distinction may be legally and politically convenient. It is less convincing as a barrier against normalisation.

A party does not necessarily need to enter government with the AfD to make the AfD a legitimate source of parliamentary majorities. Repeated cooperation on high-profile votes can achieve much of the same political effect while allowing both sides to deny that an alliance exists.

BSW’s own spokesman has acknowledged the logic. There is no formal pre-election agreement with the AfD, but the party expects AfD support because opposition to Ukraine aid is already one of its established positions.

That is the crucial development.

Ukraine has become the common language of populism

BSW and AfD occupy different positions in Germany’s traditional political spectrum. BSW combines economically left-wing policies with cultural conservatism and a sovereignist foreign policy. The AfD is a far-right populist force.

Ukraine policy gives them an unusually broad area of convergence.

Both oppose continued military support for Kyiv and favour a major change in Germany’s relationship with Russia. BSW’s wider programme calls for a sovereign foreign policy, opposition to NATO expansion and the restoration of Russian energy imports. The AfD similarly advocates ending sanctions on Russia, stopping assistance to Ukraine and rebuilding economic ties with Moscow.

The political attraction of the issue is domestic as much as geopolitical.

BSW’s campaign message - that policy should think more about Köthen than Kyiv - recasts the war as a question of household and regional priorities. Wagenknecht’s demand that “not a single cent more” go towards the war gives the argument a simple fiscal form.

That resonates with a substantial minority of voters. According to the INSA figures cited in the briefing, 35% of Germans oppose any further support for Ukraine, while 52% favour maintaining or increasing Western support if Russia refuses a ceasefire. Thirteen per cent remain undecided.

The numbers do not establish a permanent anti-aid majority. They do, however, provide enough electoral space for parties to make Ukraine a central domestic political dividing line.

In eastern Germany, where the AfD is substantially stronger, that dividing line can also become a mechanism for rearranging party relations.

Wagenknecht’s problem is not only the AfD

The BSW’s attempt to build flexible majorities creates a conflict inside the party itself.

Thuringia offers the clearest counterexample. There, BSW participates in a coalition with the CDU and SPD - precisely the sort of established-party cooperation Wagenknecht has criticised. She has argued that the regional branch lost sympathy by compromising with traditional parties.

The disagreement exposes two different theories of what BSW is for.

The federal leadership sees the party as a vehicle for breaking established political alignments and capturing voters alienated by Germany’s Ukraine policy, NATO positioning and economic relationship with Russia. Regional politicians responsible for actually governing have incentives to make workable arrangements with parties such as the CDU and SPD.

Those strategies can coexist only while the national leadership and state organisations are willing to tolerate different definitions of political success.

The Saxony-Anhalt initiative makes that tension harder to conceal. A BSW branch that needs mainstream partners to govern is being asked to operate within a national strategy that treats cooperation with the AfD as an increasingly usable instrument.

That is not merely a question of campaign tactics. It is a question of whether BSW can remain one party while pursuing incompatible coalition strategies across Germany.

Eastern elections are becoming federal contests

The deeper institutional shift is occurring because state politics can no longer be neatly separated from Germany’s national security debate.

The Bundesrat was designed to give Germany’s states a role in federal legislation. As eastern state parliaments become more fragmented, that federal mechanism offers populist parties a route into questions that are formally outside their direct competence.

The consequence is a new form of political leverage. A party does not need to control Berlin to influence Berlin’s choices. It can first influence a state government, then the composition and voting behaviour of its Bundesrat delegation, and ultimately the parliamentary arithmetic surrounding federal measures.

That makes regional elections strategically important to national foreign policy.

It also gives parties such as BSW an incentive to campaign on issues that are emotionally and politically national rather than primarily regional. Ukraine is particularly effective because it links foreign policy to inflation, public spending, energy prices, security and dissatisfaction with established parties.

For the federal government, the difficulty is that the political firewall against the AfD is easier to maintain in principle than in a fragmented parliamentary system.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the CDU have condemned the BSW-AfD positioning as an attempt to normalise political extremism and undermine national security. Mainstream parties and civic groups have also urged tactical voting to prevent BSW from becoming an intermediary through which AfD influence reaches state government.

But electoral arithmetic can be less responsive to political taboos than party leaders are.

If BSW remains around the 3% to 4% range, it may not enter the Landtag at all. If it clears the 5% threshold, however, its significance could exceed its seat share if the larger parties cannot form a stable majority without it.

That is where the firewall becomes vulnerable: not necessarily through a formal decision to abandon it, but through a succession of parliamentary situations in which breaking it appears useful for a specific purpose.

The immediate issue is Ukraine. The larger question is whether Germany’s system can continue to isolate the AfD when other parties discover that its votes can be used without accepting a formal alliance with the party itself.

And if state governments begin carrying that logic into the Bundesrat, the country’s political argument over support for Kyiv will no longer be confined to Berlin. It will be embedded in the machinery of German federalism - precisely where the boundary between regional political competition and national security policy becomes hardest to enforce.