Germany's far-right AfD has confirmed it is in talks with Gazprom to bring Russian gas back to Germany. Its foreign-policy speaker met the Russian gas giant's chief in Moscow to discuss resuming supplies, a step that would reverse the break with Russian energy Germany made after the 2022 invasion, the party told DW.

The AfD is openly working to undo one of the West's central responses to the war. Before 2022, Russia supplied about 55 percent of Germany's gas, a dependence federal officials later blamed for Berlin's slow initial reaction to the invasion.

Cutting it cost Moscow its biggest European market. Restoring it would hand back one of its largest revenue streams at a time when energy sales fund the war.

The Kremlin has already publicly welcomed the AfD’s efforts to engage in dialogue with Moscow. Dmitriy Peskov, press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has also reacted positively to the party’s growing popularity.

The AfD confirms the Moscow talks

The confirmation came from Beatrix von Storch, deputy leader of the AfD's Bundestag faction.

The party's foreign-policy speaker, Markus Frohnmaier, was in Moscow and personally spoke with Mr. Miller of Gazprom, she said, referring to Alexei Miller, the company's chairman.

"Of course, we are interested in resuming trade. We need affordable energy and the widest possible supply, so we consider it in our interest to get supplies from Russia too, which is why we are holding these talks," she said.

The politics run through the east

The talks land as the AfD surges at the polls, topping recent votes in eastern Germany and in Berlin, contests in which Russia's war against Ukraine figured in the party's platform. Asked what signal those results send Moscow, von Storch cast the war less as foreign policy than as a domestic worry.

"Of course, it is an important topic. People fear war and that Germany will be drawn into it, let itself be drawn in, or directly enter it," she said.