AfD politician Petr Bystron accepted packages from Russia

After AfD politician Petr Bystron was accused of accepting money from a pro-Kremlin network, he now admitted that he had actually received packages – but there was no money in them.

The AfD member of the Bundestag Petr Bystron admitted to the AfD federal executive committee that he had accepted small packages from the pro-Russian media manager Artem Marchevsky. This is reported by “Spiegel”, citing several members of the Federal Executive Board.

According to the Czech Security Information Service (BIS), media manager Marchevsky heads the Internet portal “Voice of Europe”. The BIS and other European partner services recently exposed the online portal as a Russian influence operation. Disinformation and pro-Kremlin propaganda are said to have been spread via the portal in a total of 14 different languages. In addition, pro-Russian politicians in Europe are said to have received money from the platform – AfD politician Petr Bystron is also suspected of having received 20,000 euros, as the magazine reports, citing the Czech government.

Bystron does not deny his statements

After the network was exposed and Bystron’s name was mentioned more often in connection with it, the politician had to justify himself again to the federal executive board. According to participants, this time he admitted to accepting small packages. However, the packages were not filled with money, according to the magazine. However, Bystron did not want to comment on the supposed actual content.

When asked by “Spiegel”, the AfD politician did not deny his admission to the federal executive board. Accordingly, he only wrote that “the campaign” should be “kept alive until the election through media like SPIEGEL.” He suspects that the video and audio recordings have “already been made available to several people.” It is “expected that these will also be published”. With this, Bystron confirms for the first time that he assumes that he was secretly filmed and listened to.