Eugen Schmidt, a computer programmer from Cologne in western Germany, credits the television stations controlled by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin for exposing what he says local media won’t -- the dangers of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy for Muslim immigrants.
A native of the Soviet Union, he was a loyal supporter of Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the years since he moved with his family to Germany in 1999. But four years ago, he defected to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, as the incoming wave of refugees from violence in the Arab world began to swell.
