AfD wants to end military assistance to Ukraine, remove sanctions on Russia, and restore relations with Moscow, including Russian energy ties. Its leaders argue that Germany is damaging its economy by paying more for energy while financing a war that diplomacy should end. That places the party against the strategic course Germany and much of Europe have set since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Merz’s government says Germany has provided or committed roughly 58 billion euros in military assistance and more than 43 billion euros in bilateral civilian support since the full-scale invasion. Germany has backed European sanctions packages and is expanding defense cooperation with Kyiv.

Russia has demonstrated that it is willing to use force to change European borders. Ukraine is therefore defending more than Ukraine, and a Europe uncertain of America’s long-term commitment must become capable of defending itself.

But that argument depends upon European voters continuing to accept its price. Saxony-Anhalt suggests that assumption deserves another look.

According to Infratest dimap data, 89% of AfD voters worried that rising prices would leave them unable to pay their bills, while 80% feared losing their standard of living. Ninety-one percent worried about the number of foreigners living in Germany, and 85% feared that Germany’s way of life was changing too much.

For many of these voters, immigration, energy prices, Ukraine, Brussels, and the German political establishment are becoming parts of the same argument: Decisions made elsewhere are changing their communities while they are expected to pay the bill.

Russia fits neatly into that narrative.

Berlin’s argument runs roughly like this: Russia invaded Ukraine, therefore Ukraine must be supported. Russian energy dependence proved dangerous, therefore, Germany must find other suppliers. Russia presents a long-term security threat, therefore. Germany must spend more on defense.

AfD offers an almost perfect inversion.

In AfD’s telling, confrontation with Russia made energy more expensive, sanctions hurt German interests, and billions are being spent on Ukraine while Germans struggle with prices and pensions. End the confrontation, restore trade, buy cheaper energy, and spend German money at home.

There are serious strategic problems with that proposition. Putin has given Europe little reason to assume accommodation will produce lasting security, and returning to Russian energy dependence would recreate the leverage Germany spent years trying to escape.

But politically, AfD’s version has one enormous advantage: It is easier to explain.

AfD is also mobilizing Germans who had stopped participating in conventional politics.

AfD does not need to control the German government to influence foreign policy. If a party opposing Ukraine assistance and favoring renewed relations with Russia approaches one-third of the national electorate, politicians in other parties eventually have to decide which parts of its appeal they can ignore.

The strange politics of that divide are already visible in Saxony-Anhalt. The left-wing BSW won five seats and disagrees with AfD on much else, but it too opposes German support for Ukraine and favors renewed relations with Russia. On one of Europe’s defining strategic questions, the familiar left-right line is beginning to blur.

The more consequential divide may be over what Germany’s security problem actually is.

For Merz and much of the European establishment, the answer is Russia. For a growing number of voters, the more immediate threats are declining purchasing power, expensive energy, immigration, and a government asking them to sacrifice for geopolitical objectives they do not necessarily share.

Saxony-Anhalt was part of communist East Germany, and AfD’s strongest support nationally is concentrated across the former German Democratic Republic.

After reunification, many eastern voters supported the post-communist Left. But economic dislocation, population loss, and the replacement of an entire political and economic system left a durable sense that decisions affecting eastern communities were being made somewhere else.

The reversal goes further. The former East is more receptive to AfD’s hard line on immigration, while also being more sympathetic than western Germany to restoring relations with Moscow. Reuters found a distinct eastern divide over Russia, shaped partly by the former GDR’s history and continuing economic and political grievances.

The former communist East is now Germany’s strongest base for the nationalist Right, deeply anxious about immigration and among the most skeptical of confronting Russia. The ideology changed. The suspicion that important decisions are being made somewhere else may not have.

That disagreement will not remain confined to Germany.

Europe’s ability to sustain Ukraine depends upon a relatively small number of countries providing money, weapons, and political leadership. Germany is indispensable. France faces its own populist pressures, while Poland and the Baltic states have a fundamentally different view of Russia because geography and history leave them little room for ambiguity.

The dividing line in Europe may increasingly run not simply between Left and Right, but between those who believe Russia must be contained and those who believe accommodation with Moscow would make their citizens safer and richer.

There is an American complication as well.

Europe’s post-2022 strategy was constructed when American military backing could largely be treated as a constant. President Donald Trump’s more transactional approach has made that assumption less comfortable, pressing Europeans to shoulder more responsibility for their defense while pursuing a negotiated end to the Ukraine war.

That should make German rearmament more urgent. Politically, however, Europeans are being told that America may become less dependable, Russia is becoming more dangerous, Ukraine still requires enormous assistance, and they therefore need to spend much more on defense.

Together, they present voters with a substantial bill.

That is why Saxony-Anhalt matters beyond its 2.1 million residents.

The election does not mean Germany is about to abandon Ukraine or return to the days of Nord Stream. AfD remains isolated by Germany’s political firewall, and most Germans have not embraced its Russia policy.

But Europe’s long-term plans assume sustained German money, industrial capacity and political commitment. They also assume German voters will continue accepting the strategic premise underlying those expenditures.

Saxony-Anhalt is a warning that they may not.

THE RIGHT KIND OF IMMIGRANTS

Europe has spent years asking whether it can defend itself if America steps back.

It may soon have to confront a more uncomfortable question: What happens if Europeans themselves decide they no longer want to pay for the confrontation they are being asked to prepare for?