Two parties that have championed Russian interests are predicted to make strong gains in German regional elections, destabilising Europe's biggest economy and potentially undermining a key pillar of military support for Ukraine.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has been chipping away at the country's post-war political system for years, injecting revisionist views into the mainstream that have prompted warnings of a resurgence of Nazi ideology. It is currently neck-and-neck with the centre-right Christian Democrats in the eastern state of Saxony, where regional elections will be held on Sept. 1.
In neighbouring Thuringia, which is also holding a regional election that day, polls even give AfD a clear lead. Its leader there, Björn Höcke, is considered a key figure in the party's most extreme right faction. Adding to that, surveys show that a new party named after far-left politician Sahra Wagenknecht could win more than 10 percent of the vote in the state. Depending on the voter turnout, forging any mainstream coalition in Thuringia without either of the two extremist parties could be difficult.
Both AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (known by its German acronym BSW) have a history of supporting Russia.
Höcke once said that if he ever becomes German chancellor, his first official trip abroad would be to Moscow. The party's co-leader Tino Chrupalla met with senior Russian officials in 2020 despite holding no government office, and AfD's two lead candidates for this year's European elections hosted Vladimir Putin's propagandist Viktor Medvedchuk in the German parliament. The pair are currently under investigation for possibly having received money from Russia.
Throughout this time AfD has parroted the Kremlin's stance on Ukraine, defended the annexation of Crimea, urging an end to German military support for Kyiv and stoking resentment against Ukrainian refugees in Germany.
BSW has taken a similar stance. Wagenknecht blames NATO for Russia's attack on Ukraine and has called for "peace" talks - a thinly veiled suggestion that Kyiv should surrender the territory captured by Russia since February 2022. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a speech in the German Bundestag earlier this year, BSW and AfD lawmakers staged a walkout in protest.
Kremlin-aligned sentiment in eastern Germany, where both states are located, should perhaps come as no surprise. From 1949 to 1990, both Saxony and Thuringia were part of the German Democratic Republic, a socialist state effectively controlled by the Soviet Union. A sizeable proportion of the population still has fond feelings for their 'big brother'.
A victory for pro-Russian parties may indeed be seen as belated vindication by some of their members and supporters. Investigative news platform Correctiv reported this week that dozens of AfD and BSW members were once part of East Germany's notorious Stasi secret police, which persecuted those who didn't uphold the state's totalitarian ideology.
The outcome will certainly be closely watched from Moscow, where anything that undermines the government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be welcomed. Putin has not taken kindly to Germany throwing its financial and military support behind Ukraine and ending the wholesale purchase of Russian fossil fuels that for decades marked relations between the two countries.
Scholz's three-party coalition, already fractious, has at most one year left before Germany holds its next national election. What happens in the east this Sunday will have a significant impact on the country - and on prospects for peace and stability across Europe.
UPDATE: As forecast, AfD looks set to have won the election in Thuringia and forming a mainstream government there without BSW may be almost impossible. In Saxony the far-right party appears to have come narrowly behind the ruling Christian Democrats, my former AP colleagues report. There, too, BSW will likely be the kingmaker. The satirical site Der Postillion, Germany's equivalent of The Onion, sums up the outcome thus: "Putin wins elections in Thuringia and Saxony."