Inside AfD’s Leaked Emails
A proposed Moscow trip offers a revealing entry into thirteen years of correspondence that Germany’s far-right leaders had expected to remain private.
The proposed destination was Moscow, and the intended host was Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. According to correspondence examined by German investigative newsroom CORRECTIV, politicians from Alternative for Germany (AfD) planned to meet him in February 2019.
Andreas Kalbitz, then the party’s leader in the German state of Brandenburg, informed its national leadership. Federal lawmakers Frank Pasemann and Steffen Kotré were also named in the plans. Kalbitz described an informal exchange, financed privately.
The European Union had placed Malofeev under sanctions in July 2014, citing his support for the destabilization of eastern Ukraine. The correspondence establishes the intention to meet him. Whether the visit happened remains unresolved.
Those plans emerged from a leak published on October 19. In an October 29 notice, AfD confirmed that attackers had accessed ten email accounts in September. CORRECTIV says the material contains roughly 420,000 emails, spanning March 2013 to September 2026.
The archive reaches across most of the party’s existence, while covering only part of its internal communications. AfDhas alleged that fabricated material is circulating and says it will refuse requests to authenticate individual leak contents.
