The German Ministry of Defense and high-ranking military officials express concern that deputies from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party may use parliamentary inquiries to obtain strategically important information. This is reported by Spiegel, citing its own sources in the German defense department, UNN reports.
Details
According to the publication, the ministry believes that some AfD deputies "deliberately process questionnaires from Moscow" concerning both specific military capabilities of the Bundeswehr and procurement schedules aimed at eliminating shortcomings in the army.
Spiegel reports that Thomas Revencamp, head of the Bundestag Defense Committee, expressed similar concerns.
It is quite clear that the AfD faction submits many systematically interconnected and very detailed requests regarding the military capabilities and shortcomings in the capabilities of the Bundeswehr.
According to him, given the cumulative nature of these requests and the degree of their detail, this cannot be "explained by a legitimate interest in issues aimed at parliamentary control over the government."
The goal here is to deliberately and systematically obtain military information of strategic importance from the German Ministry of Defense and the Bundeswehr, which would be very valuable to foreign states, especially Russia, which has been constantly intensifying espionage activities and hybrid attacks against Germany for many years.
According to the publication, the AfD faction in the Bundestag is particularly interested in the topic of drones, protection against them, and critical infrastructure. In particular, deputies of this faction submitted a total of 27 requests about how many data centers the Ministry of Internal Affairs currently has and which of them have emergency power supply capable of functioning in crisis situations lasting several hours or days.
The AfD is also interested in the preparedness of other departments – digitalization, transport, finance, and defense – for potential cyberattacks.
It is noted that "detailed answers to such questions can be especially valuable for one person, namely Putin," at whose direction hackers have been stealing political and economic secrets in Germany for many years.