International nationalism: The MAGA movement is uniting Europe’s right-wing and pro-Russian forces against the EU

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A transnationalist alliance

When the leadership of the German far-right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) appeared in Rottweil, Baden-Württemberg, on March 5 to conclude the party’s state election campaign, one figure was conspicuously absent: Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD’s candidate for the head of the state’s government.

The election was important for the AfD. Although the party frequently ranks as the country’s second most popular political force, its strongest support remains in the former East Germany. The elections in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg therefore represented an important test of the AfD’s ability to challenge mainstream parties in the west of the country.

Yet Markus Frohnmaier apparently had more important things to do than help his political movement. On March 5 he was in the United States taking part in the inaugural meeting of the Alliance of Sovereign Nations (ASN).

The ASN was organised by Turning Point Action, an American political advocacy organisation focused on electoral mobilisation, campaigning, and grassroots activism. It was founded by the late Charlie Kirk as a sister organisation of Turning Point USA — a non-profit that targets younger voters, especially on university campuses, through political events, activism, and training programs.

The launch of the ASN was spearheaded by Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a former associate of Kirk’s and a prominent representative of the far-right MAGA movement’s younger generation. The “alliance” presents itself as an international network of political actors committed to defending national sovereignty and self-government against what it calls the encroachment of unelected global institutions and transnational ideologies, advocating for a world order in which all nations prioritise their own interests, respect national identity, and resist centralised, collectivist control.

Friends of MAGA, friends of Putin

Frohnmaier was by no means the only non-U.S. politician who took part in the ASN meeting, headlined by Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. The organisers advertised that, in addition to 12 members of the U.S. Congress, the meeting would feature 83 foreign elected officials from 38 countries; however, the full list of actual participants has not been published. An analysis of social media analysis, nevertheless, can confirm the participation of at least 23 European politicians hailing from Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia.

The European participants can be divided into two largely overlapping groups — representatives of right-wing populist parties, and members of various ideologically fluid movements aligning (directly or indirectly) with the geopolitical interests of the Putin regime. In addition to Frohnmaier, far-right populist attendees included his AfD party colleagues Marc Bernhard and Anna Rathert, Petra Steger of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Barbara Bonte of the “Flemish Interest” (VB), Stephen Nikola Bartulica of the Croatian Home and National Rally party, and a large delegation from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) led by George Simion and joined by their Moldovan associate Vasile Costiuc.

Meanwhile, the more overtly pro-Putin group consisted of the Georgian delegation led by Nikoloz Samkharadze, the current Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željka Cvijanović, her colleague Radovan Kovačević, and Arno Gujon of the Serbian Progressive Party.

Again though, the two groups substantially overlap, as numerous members of the European far-right parties represented at the ASN meeting have been associated with declarations and/or activities that can be considered pro-Kremlin. The FPÖ used to have a strong pro-Putin group within the party — even concluding a cooperation agreement with Russia’s ruling “United Russia” party in 2016 — and is still effectively aligned with Moscow’s interests through its anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and opposition to the EU’s assistance for Kyiv. Several members of the FPÖ, as well as members of the Belgian VB, also took part in various Russia-organised fake election observation missions serving Moscow’s (geo)political interests.

The Romanian AUR, which had — quite extraordinarily — around ten representatives at the ASN meeting, has repeatedly opposed Romania’s military and financial support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia’s aggression. At the same time, AUR leader George Simion and several other party members have publicly advocated the “return” to Romania of Ukrainian territories with Romanian minority populations. For his statements undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Simion was banned from entering Ukraine in 2024.

However, when it comes to Russian connections, Markus Frohnmaier stands out in particular. He has maintained contacts with Russian officials and pro-Kremlin intermediaries since 2014, and has participated in coordinated influence activities promoting the lifting of EU sanctions imposed on Russia and the forging of closer relations with Moscow. Documents from 2016-2017 indicate that Russian operatives considered supporting Frohnmaier’s Bundestag electoral campaign and described him as a potential “controlled” ally who could advance pro-Russian positions within German politics. More recently, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Frohnmaier has continued to promote Kremlin-aligned positions by opposing German military assistance to Ukraine, rejecting the framing of Russia as a threat to Germany, and advocating negotiations with Moscow.

Both Frohnmaier and Simion actively developed contacts with the MAGA movement last year. In spring 2025, shortly before the Romanian presidential election, Simion’s AUR concluded a $1,500,000 agreement with the American law firm BGD Legal & Consulting that would presumably assist the party in its efforts to build connections with the MAGA leadership, as well as advise on media engagement. While the American political consultants have so far failed to make good on their promise to organise meetings for Simion with Trump, JD Vance, or Marco Rubio, Simion did succeed in establishing relations with Anna Paulina Luna.

This past January, Simion participated in celebrations in the U.S. marking the completion of the first year of the second Trump presidency. During one event, he joined Luna and other MAGA Republicans — including Abe Hamadeh and Andy Ogles — to cut a cake shaped like Greenland and decorated in the colours of the American flag.

Frohnmaier had also travelled to the U.S. in December 2025, meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Darren Beattie and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Sarah Rogers, with whom he discussed political developments in Germany and Europe, as well as the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS).

Published in November 2025, the NSS helps at least partially explain the contacts between the MAGA movement and the European far right — contacts of which the ASN meeting is only the most recent example. The NSS promotes narratives about migration, national identity, and sovereignty that overlap strongly with those of the European far right, and the American document explicitly calls for European far-right parties to resist the authority of the European Union.

The inauguration of the ASN appears to be a direct response to the publication of the NSS, organized by U.S. politicians seeking greater recognition and consolidation of their careers within the MAGA political world. In this sense, their efforts resemble those of certain Russian stakeholders who, in their attempts to obtain rewards from the Putin regime, have cultivated contacts with the European far right in response to the Kremlin’s implicit call to undermine the EU and sabotage Western unity by encouraging European radical right-wing populism.

Every man for himself, but all against the EU

It seems likely that much of the rhetoric about national identity and sovereignty being spouted by the MAGA movement and the European far right is merely a veil for a wider range of agendas and motives in which ideological affinities play only a secondary role. For example, AUR’s energetic transatlantic outreach may be aimed less at ideological mobilisation in Romania than at drawing the Trump administration into the political struggle against Romania’s liberal, pro-EU president, Nicușor Dan. In this struggle, AUR appears to perform a role that more established actors of Romania’s entrenched political elite — above all the Social Democratic Party — cannot assume themselves because of the reputational risks associated with publicly cultivating such contacts.

It may also be that Frohnmaier’s engagement with the MAGA movement is motivated less by the goal of benefiting the AfD than by encouragement from Russian stakeholders seeking to advance Moscow’s interests within the higher echelons of American power. Conveniently, Anna Paulina Luna is an almost ideal proxy for such an endeavour: since 2024 she has opposed U.S. aid to Ukraine and, and more recently has met with Russian officials, advocated closer U.S.-Russia relations, and repeated narratives circulated by Russian propaganda networks.

At the same time, representatives of the MAGA movement backed by the American techno-oligarchy are interested in weakening, if not eliminating, the EU, which they increasingly view as the main regulatory obstacle to their technological and financial ambitions. By encouraging European far-right forces working to fragment the Union — particularly in areas such as digital governance, cryptocurrencies, and artificial intelligence — they may seek to erode the EU’s ability to impose rules that constrain foreign oligarchic power and, through the so-called Brussels effect, shape regulatory standards far beyond Europe.

But while all participants of the ASN inaugural meeting have their own interests and priorities, the event itself is fundamentally a malign influence operation aimed at strengthening transatlantic networks of actors committed to weakening the EU from within. Behind the rhetoric of sovereignty, national identity, and opposition to globalism, this act of anti-European political warfare hides a darker purpose: the promotion of foreign interference, oligarchic influence, and the gradual capture of fragmented European nations by external forces.

By bringing together MAGA politicians, European far-right parties, and figures aligned with Russian geopolitical interests, the ASN initiative seeks to cultivate a political ecosystem in which the fragmentation of Europe and the erosion of its resilience in the face of authoritarian challenges become not only ideologically justified, but politically actionable.