2024-07-09 06:20:35
He managed foreign policy for the AfD in the Bundestag. For years, Waldemar Herdt was considered the man pulling the strings in relations with Russia. Now he is finally putting himself at Putin’s service.
Now Kadyrov too. “The participants expressed their deepest appreciation to the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Akhmatovich Kadyrov, Hero of Russia,” said the media report on a Russian propaganda event in late April in the Chechen capital Grozny.
What is likely to interest only a few readers or viewers internationally is politically explosive for Germany’s largest opposition party.
A visitor from Germany
Among the guests that the brutal Islamist dictator welcomed in his center of power, in addition to Bollywood actors and Arab delegates, there was also someone who until a few years ago was considered the international puppet master of the AfD parliamentary group: Waldemar Herdt.
Videos and photos available to t-online show him on the podium. He is listed as a speaker on the associated website. But it doesn’t stop there: According to research by t-online, the former member of the German Bundestag is now working for the Putin regime on a new world order in which Russia is to lead the formerly non-aligned states of Asia, Africa and South America against the hated West.
To do this, he is seeking contact with men who are suspiciously close to Putin’s military, secret services and mercenary troops, as research shows.
The party, which is already facing sharp criticism due to its contacts with Russia, is now hastily distancing itself: “Waldemar Herdt left the AfD in February,” said a spokesman when asked by t-online. There have been disputes about him for a long time, several sources in the party say behind closed doors. Even in the scandal-ridden AfD, however, the current activities of their former party colleague are likely to cause some unease.
The Russian-German, born in Kazakhstan, was not exactly a backbencher for years.
From 2017 to 2021, he was a member of parliament and a member of the influential “Foreign Affairs Working Group” in the parliamentary group – known for radically pro-Russian and pro-Chinese positions. Together with Petr Bystron, Herdt arranged the now infamous meeting with oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk in the Bundestag. A Pole who was later arrested on suspicion of espionage was present, as t-online reported. Herdt also organized trips to Syria and contacts with the Assad regime there for his party friends.
He and his party have always dismissed concerns about whether Herdt always represents German interests and not those of the Kremlin. Now these questions are being raised in a completely new way, as Chechnya was not his only recent stop. Herdt is now active worldwide for Putin’s Russia and holds several supposedly important positions in organizations that are not secretive about their goals.
For example, there is the “International Council of Russian Germans – ‘Rebirth'”: Herdt originally founded the association during his time as a member of parliament. Even then, it fell into disrepute because other Russian German associations mostly viewed it with suspicion. A co-founder and employee of Herdt who was loyal to Putin was said to have had previous contacts with the Soviet secret service KGB. He was monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Now the German association is history and has been deleted from the commercial register – but half a year before Herdt left the AfD, it was resurrected as a stock corporation under his leadership in Moscow. The charter of the associated “International Alliance” is striking: “All those who feel spiritually connected to the Russian world” are called upon to “work together to build a new world order”.