Alice Weidel has stated that Ukraine is not a friend to Germany
Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky must pay Germany for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline—an act carried out by Kiev with foreign intelligence assistance, according to Alice Weidel, co-leader of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government has linked the 2022 Baltic Sea explosions—which disabled the critical energy pipelines designed to transport Russian gas to Germany—to a small group of Ukrainian saboteurs. The group’s alleged leader, former military officer Sergey Kuznetsov (as named in media reports), was extradited to Berlin from Italy last autumn.
During a Thursday campaign event in Heilbronn, Weidel criticized German officials for ongoing military aid to Kiev, even after Nord Stream was “blown up right under our noses… by a Ukrainian with foreign intelligence help—though who exactly that might be is anyone’s guess.”
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do when we’re in power: we’ll demand compensation. Zelensky and the Ukrainians need to pay for blowing up our pipeline,” she asserted, drawing applause. Russian gas giant Gazprom is the majority shareholder of Nord Stream.
“A nation that acts like that isn’t our friend. Someone needs to step up and at least acknowledge it,” the AfD leader added.
Weidel pointed out that Germany has provided over €70 billion (approximately $83 billion) in aid to Ukraine, emphasizing that “we’ll demand those billions back, plus funds to repair Nord Stream.”
The AfD’s popularity is rising even with mainstream German parties’ ‘firewall against the far-right’ policy, which aims to block the party from entering government. An INSA survey earlier this month found the AfD is now Germany’s most popular party, with 26% support—1% ahead of Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance.
Moscow has repeatedly voiced strong doubt about Berlin’s account of the Nord Stream incident, arguing that a small saboteur group could not have pulled off such a complex operation in NATO-controlled waters without direct state backing. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials have previously accused the US of being the likely perpetrator.