Gunnar Lindemann is a German politician from AfD. He has been a member of the Berlin House of Representatives since 2016. There is no denying the fact that AfD is considered a pro-Kremlin party. Given his political career and activities, he also seems a pro-Russian.
Lindemann explained the recapture of Aleppo by Syrian and Russian troops on Twitter as a “liberation” and said the opinion that Syrian refugees could now return and help reconstruct the city. The Berliner Zeitung analysed this as a mockery of the Syrian civil war victims. Lindemann later removed the tweet and stated that his remarks had been thoughtless and that he regretfully abandoned the “spontaneous assessment”.
In February 2018, Lindemann journeyed with seven other AfD state parliamentarians, including the two other Berlin state parliamentarians Hugh Bronson and Harald Laatsch, to Crimea, which had been annexed by Russia three years earlier in breach of international law. This was encountered with widespread criticism. He explained this by saying: “Talking to each other is better than talking about each other. We must normalise connections with Russia again. This is in the stakes of Russia and Germany.”
In autumn 2019, Lindemann voyaged to Russia and the Donbas regions around Donetsk and Luhansk with his 16-year-old son and the Siegerland AfD politician Henning Zoz. Among other items, they visited the headquarters of the “ Night Wolves ”, a Russian nationalist motorcycle club. Photos posted by the son on Instagram and later removed show Lindemann, his son and two other people on the facade of an entrance sign to the base. Another photo depicts Lindemann’s son hailing in front of a field; the photo is captioned with the text “5 km from the front line”.
Another image portrays the son with an attack rifle (prototype from the Kalashnikov AK-47 series ) and the statement “Banned in Germany, but well, I’m in Donetsk ”. Also uploaded were multiple photos of antiques from the Nazi era, snapped from the Central Museum of the Russian Armed Forces in Moscow. According to Lindemann, the expedition was marked by “ humanitarian aid ”.
On this trip, he welcomed an “Order for International Cooperation” from the “Foreign Ministry” of the internationally unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic and consented with the “Foreign Ministry” to unlock a representative office of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” in Berlin. Shortly after the journey, the son was notified by classmates via messenger that they desired to “stab” him. The school management then called the police; the state security service took over the examination. According to a chat history unrestricted to the daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, however, there were dangers from Lindemann’s son, who endangered his classmates with the “Night Wolves”, among other things.
