German police prevented at least twelve right-wing extremists with German passports from travelling to Ukraine in 2019. This is stated in the response of the German Cabinet of Ministers to a request from the Left Party faction in the Bundestag. The document was made public by the German newspaper Die Zeit
According to the newspaper, of the radicals seeking to travel to Ukraine were several members of the far-right group Third Way, which was established in 2013.
Additionally, the federal police prevented a previously convicted neo-Nazi from Thuringia from entering Ukraine. His name has not been released.
Last January, the German government said that it had data on sporadic cases of radicals from Germany having contacts with right-wing extremist groups in Ukraine. At the same time, the German Cabinet of Ministers said at the time that “so far there has been no information about activities for which criminal prosecution was envisaged or about the actual participation of German citizens in military actions in Ukraine”. However, in October last year, Berlin officially reported two Germans who had been killed in 2015 during the conflict in Donbass.
The Left Party faction in the enquiry was interested in the organisation Source of Force, which was allegedly founded in 2018 by members of the radical organisation Azov and German right-wing extremists. Its stated purpose is allegedly to mediate recreational activities in Germany, Die Zeit wrote. According to the newspaper, the organisation’s headquarters is located in the Saxon city of Pirna, a building that houses the local office of the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany.