Alternative for Germany’s lead candidate to step down from party board – Europe live

Terry Reintke, a Green lead candidate in the European elections, has argued that despite Maximilian Krah’s move to step down from the AfD’s leadership board, Alternative for Germany is still extremist.

“One thing does not change: the AfD and its right-wing extremist friends are Putin’s extended arm in the EP,” she said.

“They want to destroy the EU and our democracy. We will stop them,” she added.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy has reiterated a sense of urgency this morning.

“In order to destroy the enemy, deter Russian pressure, and achieve the results necessary for Ukraine, we need prompt assistance from our partners,” he wrote on social media.

“Our warriors must be able to use the necessary weapons as soon as possible. This is the only way we can ensure the Ukrainian result we all need,” he added.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, said today that Russia would regard the seizure of revenue from its frozen assets in the EU as a violation of all norms of the global economic system, and that Moscow is still working on its response, Reuters reported.

Yesterday, the Council of the EU approved using net profits stemming from frozen Russian assets to be used for military support to Ukraine, defence industry capacities and reconstruction.

Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, has said her National Rally party needed to make a “clean break” with the German Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Reuters reported.

In a radio interview, Le Pen accused the AfD of being rudderless and in hock to radical elements within it.

“It was urgent to establish a cordon sanitaire,” she said on Europe 1 radio. “The AfD goes from provocation to provocation,” she said.

“Now it’s no longer time to distance ourselves, it’s time to make a clean break with this movement,” she added.

In a recent interview, the AfD’s lead candidate, Maximilian Krah, told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that “SS were not all criminals”.

The comment led Le Pen’s party to declare it will not sit with the AfD in the next parliament. Both Le Pen’s National Rally and the AfD are now members of the Identity and Democracy grouping in the European parliament.

This morning, Krah announced that he will stop campaigning and step down from the AfD’s leadership board.

The AfD – and Krah himself – have been embroiled in multiple controversies in recent months.

Last month, one of Krah’s aides was arrested over accusations he spied for China.

Maximilian Krah, Alternative for Germany’s lead candidate in the European parliament elections, said he will refrain from making any further campaign appearances and step down from the party’s leadership board.

Krah has been embroiled in multiple controversies over the past weeks. In a recent interview, the far-right politician said he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal@.

The comment led France’s National Rally to declare it will not sit with the AfD in the next parliament, highlighting divisions within Europe’s far-right and nationalist camp weeks ahead of the European elections.

Ukrainian air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said that overnight “the Ukrainian Defense Forces managed to shoot down all 24 Shaheds,” Ukrinform reports.

The head of the Donetsk regional state administration, Vadym Filashkin, said in a social media post this morning that “on May 21st, the number of the victims of the Russians in Donetsk oblast increased by 1 killed, 3 injured.”

Oleksandr Lytvynenko, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, told the Financial Times that Washington should lift its “absolutely unfair” ban on the Ukrainian armed forces using American-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

Lytvynenko said “it would be beneficial” for Kyiv if the Biden administration lifted that restriction.