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Germany’s parliament recently held a special session to discuss whether members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) may have been deliberately acting in Russia’s interests. The debate was initiated by lawmakers from the Social Democrats (SPD) and the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, who demanded explanations from AfD’s leadership after the populist party made a series of unusually detailed parliamentary inquiries into the state of the country’s defense and cybersecurity systems, according to a report by Der Spiegel.

Thomas Röwekamp, chair of the Bundestag’s Defense Committee and a CDU member, said AfD lawmakers had submitted “systematically connected and extremely detailed” questions about the Bundeswehr’s capabilities and “combat readiness gaps.” The scope and level of detail, he said, “cannot be explained by a legitimate interest in parliamentary oversight of the government.” Röwekamp suggested that the effort appeared to be “a targeted and systematic collection of military information from the Defense Ministry and the Bundeswehr, information of significant value to foreign powers — in particular Russia, which has for years continuously intensified its espionage and hybrid attacks against Germany.”

Georg Maier, interior minister of the German state of Thuringia, earlier said his ministry had observed similar AfD inquiries in the state parliament, focusing on transport, energy, and digital infrastructure. He suggested the party might be “acting on the Kremlin’s orders” in its inquiries.

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