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AfD Preps Talks With Moscow To Reopen Cheap Gas Flows To Germany

It didn't take long for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party - fresh off its historic taking of 43.8% of the vote in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt election earlier this month which left Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) shaken - to embark on ties which are a serious shot across the bow and slap in the face to both Berlin and Brussels.

Reuters is on Friday reporting that AfD leadership is preparing for possible talks with President Putin and his economic envoy and top negotiator Kirill Dmitriev focused on restoring Russian gas supplies to Germany.

via Reuters

The meeting could take place next year, as early as March 2027, and would be spearheaded by AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla.

This is precisely what German voters supported in the regional election, and the AfD made no secret of its plans to seek turning the Russian energy tap back on. Weidel made clear in a June interview, "Cheap energy from Russia was the secret of the success of 'Made in Germany'. We need it back." 

"The loss of this energy has set us back years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost," the AfD co-leader said at the time. "It has made us dependent on ​the United States, which sells us energy at far higher prices."

Russia had prior to the start of the Ukraine war supplied over half of Germany's natural gas, alongside more than a third of the country's crude oil imports.

Russian natgas to Germany was halted in stages, in tandem with the major Nord Stream bombings and investigation, as Berlin eventually found alternative suppliers like Norway, the Netherlands and increased its reliance on LNG imports.

Many Germans have been sick and tired of seeing daily living prices go up while resources and untold billions are siphoned off for the Zelensky government in the Ukraine war.

Getty Images

While nothing has yet to be officially announced or confirmed by the Russian side or through any AfD official statement, Reuters points to a key caveat based on its sources: "The meeting would only happen if a peace framework was agreed first between Russia and Ukraine, ​and the organisers hoped it would bring together the AfD, Russia and the United States, the person said. Possible locations for the summit included ⁠Israel, the United Arab Emirates or India, they added," the report says.

Earlier, we featured commentary by Andrew Korybko which seeks to summarize the mood in both Moscow and among the 'hard-rightward' turning German streets:

Finally, the economic errors concern the EU's sanctions on Russian energy, which led to the bloc replacing inexpensive long-term gas contracts with Russia with expensive market-priced imports from elsewhere. Prices are now nearly ten times higher than before and "may well rise even further." Putin also criticized the EU's gas storage policies for being "unconcerned with the technical condition of these storage facilities and the physical volumes involved." All of this adversely affects the EU's economy.

All in all, Putin is arguing that the AfD's rise is an electoral revolt against these policies, all of which center on Russia. This doesn't mean that the party or its supporters are "pro-Russian", let alone "Russian puppets", just that they understand the importance of pragmatic ties with Russia for their country's political interests, security, and economic development. Obsessive anti-Russian fearmongering, risking World War III over Ukraine, and dumping inexpensive Russian energy haven't helped Germany at all.

"Bests interests for Germany" being prioritized, where energy supplies "are cheapest, namely from Russia"...

German AfD Leader Alice Weidel on Russia:

We have to obtain fossil fuels from wherever natural gas and oil are cheapest — namely, from Russia.

It is in our own security interests as well as our economic interests to have good relations with Russia. pic.twitter.com/FkKKOpCDAo

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 14, 2026

As a reminder, there were already some deeply provocative diplomatic AfD moves back in June, with AfD foreign-policy spokesman Markus Frohnmaier having traveled to St. Petersburg to meet with Dmitriev and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, urging the reopening of the Nord Stream pipeline.

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Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 10:45

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The Purge: Princeton Faculty Reach Perfect Zero Support For Republicans

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

We recently discussed how Yale faculty reached academic nirvana after years of purging departments of conservatives and Republicans. The university finally showed zero political donations to Republicans. Now Princeton can claim that it has succeeded in a similar cleansing, according to a new study by Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS). The study shows that 98% of political donations went to Democrats or Democrat-affiliated groups and 0% went to Republicans or affiliated groups.

Political contributions are one measure that helps gauge the degree of ideological orthodoxy and intolerance in higher education. While some academics simply do not make contributions and may still hold conservative views, the study still offers another insight into the political preferences of those who do make such contributions. The study does not mean that we can assume that the number of academics with conservative or libertarian values is zero. (There are obvious outliers such as Robby George). However, few would dispute that it reaffirms the extreme imbalance of ideological views at this and other universities.

Professors often express shock at the thought that there would be any political or ideological litmus test for hiring. I have also opposed such measures. However, the hypocrisy is crushing. Today's faculty are responsible for a near-complete ideological purging of their ranks. They have created a hostile environment for anyone with conservative or libertarian viewpoints, including students who rarely have the opportunity to hear from a professor from a center-right perspective at most schools.

Most recently, forty percent of college faculty admitted that they would vote against any Trump supporter seeking an academic position regardless of their scholarship or teaching ability. Keep in mind that this is only the professors willing to admit to such bias.

Some are more open than others.

I had dinner with a Harvard Law Professor, who expressed disbelief that I expected him to vote for any faculty applicants who held views he considered wrong. When I noted that I regularly vote for faculty candidates who hold opposing views, he just shrugged and said that, if he rejects their views, he cannot vote for those views to be taught to students.

There are few remaining conservatives or libertarians on law school faculties, which have been purged of dissenting voices through a biased hiring and promotion system. Despite years of complaints and declining public trust in higher education, faculty members continue to reinforce bias and orthodoxy in our schools.

I wrote about the rise of this new McCarthyism on the left seven years ago.

Recently, I discussed the example of Fordham University School of Law professor John Pfaff, who called for "repercussions" for professors who do not "recant" their view that the 14th Amendment does not protect birthright citizenship.

Not long ago, I debated Professor Randall Kennedy at Harvard Law School about the school's lack of ideological diversity. I respect Kennedy, and I do not view him as anti-free speech or intolerant. Yet when I noted the statistics on the vanishing number of conservative students and faculty in comparison to the nation, Kennedy responded that Harvard "is an elite university" and does not have to "look like America."

Of course, the problem is that Harvard does not even look like Massachusetts, which is nearly 30 percent Republican.

At schools like Yale and Princeton, they have achieved near 100% for Democrats (with only a couple of percent going for independent or socialist causes). Yet, if you ask faculty about the purging of their ranks, they will often shrug and say that they just cannot find a conservative or libertarian who is intellectually worthy of an appointment to their schools. It was the same absurd rationalization that was once used to justify not hiring minorities or women.

I just had a debate with a William & Mary law professor who admitted there is no other rational explanation for the virtual absence of conservatives and libertarians than systemic bias. Indeed, if a company were to go to court to say that there was nothing intentional in a virtual absence of minority employees, it would be laughed out of court.

Of course, nothing is laughable about the state of higher education. This generation of administrators and faculty are destroying our educational institutions because they cannot set aside their political bias and intolerance for the benefit of their schools. Higher education has reached record lows in public trust. Yet, these professors and deans are insulated from such public opinion. They are often financially insulated from the economic impact of such isolation. In higher education, the echo chamber works to their personal benefit, increasing their opportunities for writing and conferences. They also do not face opposing views of their scholarship or viewpoints.

Recently, I participated in a debate with the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). He doubled down on his call for universities to pursue more political agendas and activism. AAUP later broke its long-standing apolitical tradition and endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

This is why I have advised university presidents who want to restore intellectual diversity that they cannot rely on faculty members. With enough donor and faculty pressure, deans may add a single conservative, but they have shown they are unwilling to make real changes to the academic echo chamber they have created.

In the same way, I have encouraged state legislatures to tie further public subsidies to real and substantial changes in creating intellectual diversity among faculty.

If we are to protect these bastions of free speech, legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members still take the view that citizens are a captive audience expected to keep funding their departments, while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state.

If faculty members want to maintain echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.

Legislatures can demand evidence that schools maintain intellectually diverse faculty when determining the level of continued support from citizens. Otherwise, it is ridiculous to expect the public to subsidize their ideological echo chambers of faculty.

For schools like Princeton, donors clearly do not want or expect intellectual diversity. They keep donating to a school that has systematically purged its ranks and now runs from the left to the far left.

As these surveys confirm what we already know about the intellectual intolerance of today's faculty and administrators, they can at least spare us the performative denials. They should embrace their bias and dogmatism. Own it. This is what they have built through years of ideological agendas and intolerance.

After all, how many academic institutions can claim true perfection? Princeton is effectively a closed shop for Republicans. "Rah rah rah Tiger, tiger, tiger / Sis, sis, sis / Boom, boom, boom, ah! / Princeton! Princeton! Princeton!"

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of "Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 10:25

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