When Vladimir Sergienko, 52, appears on Russian state television, he rarely minces words. If the situation for Ukrainian civilians is so unbearable, then it is time for Kyiv to be thinking about surrendering, he told the station NTV a few months ago. Otherwise, he said, the war would continue until Ukraine no longer posed any danger to Russia.

NATO, Sergienko warned in the broadcast, shouldn't get the idea of attacking Russia. "Within 12 minutes, something will begin that can't be stopped. There will be no more Warsaw, nothing." It had obviously been an allusion to nuclear war.

The man, who spreads the kind of propaganda that is surely to Vladimir Putin's liking, is also a person of interest to the German security authorities. Sergienko lives in Berlin and is active with the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In the course of its reporting, DER SPIEGEL learned that he now works as a staff member for the AfD member of parliament Eugen Schmidt. He has full access to the buildings of parliament in Berlin, which has left people within the security apparatus growing increasingly nervous.

No party in Germany has sought proximity to Putin's regime  to the extent that the AfD has in recent years. Top officials from the party have been given the kinds of receptions in Moscow normally reserved for official state visitors. Nor did the party cut off its contacts after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As recently as May, party head Tino Chrupalla and Honorary Chairman Alexander Gauland attended a reception at the Russian Embassy in Berlin to mark the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.

In the case of Sergienko, though, the party's proximity to Russia has reached a new dimension. There is suspicion that the eloquent man has provided the Kremlin with indirect access to the Bundestag, the federal parliament and heart of German democracy. Western intelligence services suspect that Sergienko may be exerting influence on the AfD on behalf of Moscow. They believe it is also possible that he is supplying the party or people close to it with money. Customs workers twice discovered large sums of cash on Sergienko after his many trips to Russia.

Sergienko, who was born in Lviv, Ukraine, during the Soviet era, has lived in Germany since 1991, but has also spent time in Russia. He first made a name for himself there as a writer. His books are on subjects like "Swearing in Russian," a guide to the correct use of swear words, a version of which also got published in Germany. At readings, he taught German audiences how to drink vodka, which he described as being like yoga for Russians.

According to classified documents, in addition to his Ukrainian passport, Sergienko now has a Russian passport as well. And around six months ago, he also became a naturalized German citizen.

At War with the German Government

But Sergienko has been at war with the German government for some time now. On social networks, he disseminated a photo montage of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel in a Muslim chador. "Anyone who dares not show understanding for Merkel's 'refugee policy' is, at the very least, a Kremlin agent and a Putin supporter," he claimed in 2016. He has disparaged current Green Party government minister Annalena Baerbock as "Germany's foreign hobgoblin minister."

Before Sergienko became closely associated with the AfD, he had initially moved in circles close to Germany's far-left Left Party. He posted photos on the internet showing him, for example, with Left Party parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch at a champagne reception and having coffee in front of a brewery in Berlin's Marzahn district with Gesine Lötzsch, the deputy head of the party's parliamentary group, or next to party intellectual luminary Gregor Gysi at an event at the German Embassy in Moscow. When asked, the left-wing politicians today deny having been acquainted with Sergienko.

Another shot from 2018 shows Sergienko next to the then deputy spokesperson for the Left Party's group in parliament at the Vienna State Opera. The photo also shows a man with whom Sergienko has been associated ever since: Ulrich Oehme, then a member of the Bundestag. He is one of the right-wing extremists in the AfD associated with far-right politician Björn Höcke  and a leading figure of the party's pro-Russian wing.

During his time as a member of parliament, Oehme traveled to Crimea, which was annexed in violation of international law, and praised the conduct of the presidential election. The trip had been paid for by the Russian parliament. When he later ran for mayor in Chemnitz, Oehme printed his campaign slogan "For Law and Order" on posters in Russian as well.

AfD member Oehme, who had a seat in the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021, hired Sergienko as a staff member in his constituency office in Limbach-Oberfrohna in the eastern state of Saxony, at the time "in a marginal job," according to his own account.

In February 2021, Oehme and Sergienko also founded the purportedly non-profit Institute for Social Research in Chemnitz together with the rector of a right-wing nationalist university in Moscow. According to the documents founding the organization, the three contributed 8,400 euros each, with half of that provided in cash. What, exactly, the institute does is unclear. It doesn't even have a website. According to Oehme, it is going to be shut down in the coming weeks.

The ominous institute isn't the only tie between Oehme and Sergienko. According to the homepage, the pro-Russian author also acts as "director of international relations" at the AfD politician's insurance company, which is based at the same address in Chemnitz.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Oehme and other AfD politicians ultimately founded the "Association for the Defense Against Discrimination and the Exclusion of Russian Germans and Russian-Speaking Fellow Citizens in Germany" (Vadar), which Sergienko is also involved with. Among the board members is AfD member of the Bundestag Eugen Schmidt, for whom Sergienko now works in parliament. Schmidt said he is working in a "120-euro job" as a "translator and in media relations" for his office, "reflecting the limited nature of his duties."

Fake News About Russian Atrocities

Schmidt, an ethnic German late repatriate to Germany from Kazakhstan, serves as the "Commissioner for Russian Germans" in the AfD's parliamentary group. He has repeatedly emerged as an apologist for Putin's regime. In interviews with media loyal to the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry's television channel, he has claimed that Germany is no longer a democracy, that there was neither the rule of law nor freedom of expression in this country.

Vadar, an association led by Schmidt and Oehme, among others, complains on its Telegram channels about purportedly widespread "Russophobia" in Germany. For the association, that apparently includes the German authorities' action against the display of the Russian "Z" symbol, which Putin fans use to glorify the invasion of Ukraine. The AfD-affiliated outfit also spreads fake news online about Russia's atrocities. For example, Vadar has claimed that the Bucha massacre, with more than 400 dead, was "staged by the Ukrainian regime to discredit the Russian army." The association also provided a lawyer to an influential German pro-Putin influencer, a woman who is now under investigation for advocating the war of aggression.

In June, a delegation with Vadar made a pilgrimage to Moscow and met with Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova, a former major-general in the police. Vadar proudly announced that Moskalkova had promised to support the organization "in the fight against Russophobia and discrimination." AfD member Oehme and Sergienko reportedly traveled to the meeting, but neither commented on the matter when asked.

Today, Sergienko wants nothing to do with the government of the country in which he grew up – and the state doesn't want anything to do with him either. A few months ago, Ukraine placed the pro-Russian writer on its sanctions list.

Sergienko's propaganda appearances are the apparent reason. He's a regular guest on Russian state television, appearing on shows including one with Putin's chief agitator, Vladimir Solovyov. On the radio station Sputnik, which is loyal to the Kremlin, Sergienko warned last year that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was striving to develop a nuclear bomb. If he gets such a weapon, he said, it will be "aimed at only one place – Moscow, the Kremlin."

Even after the start of the war of aggression on Ukraine, Sergienko has been flying to Russia regularly. After one of these trips, with a stopover in Turkey, customs officials at the Hamburg airport inspected him at the end of April. In the process, the officers discovered he was carrying 9,000 euros. A few weeks later, in June, he is said to have been stopped again on his way back to Germany – and to have had 9,000 euros in his luggage again. And thus only slightly less than the 10,000 euros people are permitted to bring into Germany without registering that cash.

A "Very Serious Matter"

When asked, Sergienko denied providing any financial support to the AfD. He also categorically rejected the suspicion that "I could be spreading propaganda on behalf of state authorities." In his work, he added, "I always act independently and am bound solely by my conscience." He said it was "remarkable that maintaining positive relations with Russia is considered unusual."

The fact that Ukraine has put him on a sanctions list seems "ridiculously stupid" to him on the one hand, Sergienko said in an interview, but on the other, it is a "very serious matter." He said it is possible that Ukraine could move to revoke his citizenship – or arrest him if he travels to the country.

In Germany, on the other hand, the government has appeared somewhat helpless so far in dealing with the propagandist. Despite serious misgivings on the part of high-ranking officials, he was even granted a German passport a few months ago. The episode reveals how the principle of defensible democracy in Germany sometimes reaches its limits.

According to research by DER SPIEGEL, Sergienko applied for German citizenship at the district office in Berlin Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf as early as 2019. A routine security check conducted a short time later didn't reveal anything remarkable. The security authorities, Berlin government sources say, didn't have the ambitious pro-Russian propagandist on their radar at the time – and had given the green light.