Politico reports:

Vladimir Putin may be smarting over Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region this month, but this weekend he’ll likely be celebrating territorial gains farther west — in Germany.

Russia-friendly parties across three eastern German states — Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia — are poised to score substantial gains in regional elections in September, two of which are set for Sunday.

The pro-Russian Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a strong chance of finishing first in all three states, and with the recently formed leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) surging, Moscow stands to reestablish a strong foothold across a broad swath of the former East Germany, a region it dominated for decades during the Cold War.

If the forecasts are borne out at the ballot box, the results are bound to stir deep anxiety across Germany. An extremist landslide would both expose the degree to which the efforts of Germany’s political establishment to repair the country’s east-west divide have failed, and shake Berlin’s already wobbly tripartite coalition to its core.

A sweep would also mark a personal victory for Putin. The Russian leader cut his teeth as a KGB spy in the 1980s in Dresden, an experience that left him with an enduring fascination for all things German. A biographer even once dubbed him “the German in the Kremlin.” [Continue reading…]