Welcome to Voices of the Fight— a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.
My name is TIM SCHRAMM, and my mission is to make Europe—and Germany with it—what it once was: the cultural, economic, and civilizational engine of the world.
I would be handing Russia a victory without a fight simply because a few idiots inside the party got on my nerves.
My engagement in Ukraine is directly connected to that mission. Europe is currently being strangled from two sides, and Russia’s military pressure no longer stops at Ukraine’s borders. We cannot retreat into the comfortable fiction that this is only about Ukraine or simply a conflict between competing interests. The country attacking Ukraine with drones is now also attacking us with drones.
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Ukraine has accepted immense sacrifices to fight a battle that we should, in fact, be fighting ourselves. That is why I say my political activism is my front. The front is already here, and we are participants in this war whether we admit it or not, and my task is to make people understand this.
I would rather work inside a significant party, build networks, and influence its direction than withdraw into some irrelevant minor party.
The struggle may be most tangible in Ukraine because you can see the enemy, confront him, and defeat him. But the same struggle also exists politically in Germany. If we want fundamental change in the Federal Republic, we need political leverage. The AfD is such a lever because it has a genuine prospect of attaining political power. I would rather work inside a significant party, build networks, and influence its direction than withdraw into some irrelevant minor party.
I agree with the AfD on many domestic questions, including reducing bureaucracy, pursuing remigration, abolishing nonsensical regulations, and eliminating taxes that sometimes appear to be taxes on the air we breathe. Foreign policy is the most important issue for me, but the disagreement does not make my membership a contradiction.
If I left, some of the people who joined or became active because of my position might leave with me. Who would benefit from that? The pro-Russian forces would inherit a party that could soon participate in government. I would be handing Russia a victory without a fight simply because a few idiots inside the party got on my nerves.
You could have told the defenders of Kyiv the same thing. You could have said: “Just give up. You are a group of 50- or 60-year-old men with beer bellies and Kalashnikovs, and now the Russian elite troops are coming.” They did not give up. They fought, and they won.
What impressed me most during my service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) was the organized chaos. Nobody seemed to know exactly what was happening, and nobody necessarily wanted to know too much, but somehow everything continued to work.
An actual pig was walking around between the ammunition crates. …Any normal German would have suffered a nervous breakdown.
Once a week, for example, a man would arrive with cucumbers, around 400 liters of milk, enormous quantities of mayonnaise and ketchup, and whatever else was needed. Then he would also unload mortar rounds. Those rounds were stored in a pigsty, where an actual pig was walking around between the ammunition crates. You looked at it and thought: “What the hell is going on here?” Any normal German would have suffered a nervous breakdown. But it worked.
That was true even under constant artillery fire. You heard the shells whistling and exploding around you while you sat in a hole or held a position. In the moment, you did not really think about it. Out of the thousands of shells fired at you, only one had to land in the right place. But you still carried on.
Strangely enough, you also slept like a baby at the front. Everyone who has been there says the same thing. You could go to sleep at ten in the evening, wake up at noon, and wonder how you had possibly slept that long despite the artillery.
The Ukrainians approached everything with the same mentality. Someone would take nothing but three packets of instant coffee to the front line and say, “It will work out somehow.” Meanwhile, I would be calculating how to ration my drinks, whether I needed another power bank, and whether I should bring my Apple Watch charging cable. The Ukrainian would take his phone, discover that the battery was empty, and simply say, “Well, that’s unfortunate.”
Doing things immediately.
Most necessary tasks are not particularly enjoyable. But if I already know that something has to be done, I have two choices. I can spend the entire day thinking, “Damn, I still have to do that,” or I can do it immediately and spend the rest of the day knowing it is finished.
I have never liked postponing things. Even at school, when we received seven assignments to complete over the course of a week, the teacher would tell us to do one every day. I would complete all seven on Monday because I did not want to think about them for the rest of the week.
That is still how I try to work: Get it done, move on, and do not carry unnecessary tasks around in your head.
4 | How can people support your work?
Follow what I do, share it, and participate when I organize fundraising campaigns for my guys in Ukraine. I regularly collect money for them, and I can guarantee that the money reaches its intended destination. I am not going to use it to buy myself a beer.
But my most important appeal to the German audience is this: Join the AfD and change it. Do not sit around complaining about its position on Russia. Become a member and make sure that position changes.
The same applies in Austria. Join the FPÖ or whichever local right-wing party has political influence, and ensure that its pro-Russian forces no longer determine its direction. Do not sit beside an X account and complain that these parties cannot be supported. Enter them and do something about it.
That also applies to Americans and everyone else. Become active. Simply do things.
5 | Where can people follow you?
I use the same name everywhere: @ogschrammi. You can follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube. I have been less active on YouTube recently, but I intend to change that.
Nikolaus Muchitsch is chief of staff and strategy at Under Fire News.
Trump’s Envoys Return to Moscow—Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have arrived in Moscow for a renewed American attempt to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, where they were received by Vladimir Putin’s economic envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, before expected talks with the Russian president. Dmitriev has participated in the envoys’ previous Kremlin meetings and helped negotiate American sanctions exemptions for Russian oil, making him both Moscow’s diplomatic intermediary and a channel for securing economic concessions. Witkoff and Kushner are scheduled to travel onward by plane to Kyiv on Sunday for their first visit to the Ukrainian capital.**Meanwhile, last night Russia bombed both airports in Kyiv.**The Witkoff-Kushner visit to Kyiv will be the first by senior foreign officials to wartime Ukraine by plane rather than train.
Moscow Fails the Simplest Test of Diplomacy—Russia continued attacking Ukraine after Kyiv ordered its forces to observe a temporary ceasefire from September 5 through 8, timed to coincide with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s diplomatic visits to Moscow and Kyiv. A Russian ballistic strike on an industrial facility in Kamianske killed four people and wounded five, while drones struck Kyiv and the surrounding region, injuring two women in Boryspil. Ukraine reported intercepting 128 of 167 Russian drones launched overnight, and Russian assaults continued along the front.
This was not technically a broken agreement because Moscow never accepted the proposal. It was something more revealing: Kyiv demonstrated its willingness to pause operations for diplomacy, while Russia answered by maintaining military pressure as American envoys arrived in Moscow.
Putin’s Advance Shrinks Under ExaminationRussian forces occupied approximately 133 square kilometers (roughly 50 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in August, according to battlefield monitoring group Black Bird Group, with most advances concentrated in Donetsk Oblast around the Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka sectors.
That is a limited gain for an army conducting continuous offensive operations along a front more than 1,000 kilometers long, and it contrasts sharply with Vladimir Putin’s public claim that Russia captured 270 square kilometers in Donetsk alone.
A Jet Drone Reaches the Heart of Kyiv—A Russian jet-powered drone struck the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service in central Kyiv, injuring at least 12 people and damaging the building directly opposite St. Sophia Cathedral. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the aircraft had been deliberately aimed at the office of acting SBU chief Oleksandr Poklad, who was not present. The attack represents a shift from Russia’s recent concentration on energy, logistics, and industrial targets toward an attempted strike on Ukraine’s intelligence leadership in one of the capital’s most heavily protected districts.
The SBU has organized some of Ukraine’s most damaging operations against Russia, including attacks on the Kerch Bridge, oil infrastructure, and strategic bombers during Operation Spiderweb, making its headquarters an obvious target for strikes. Zelenskyy has ordered a “mirrored” response.
Trump Trusts Putin Over NATO’s Evidence—Donald Trump has dismissed concerns that Russia’s escalating espionage and sabotage campaign could develop into a wider confrontation with NATO, saying Vladimir Putin is “not looking to attack NATO territory” and declining to condemn Moscow over the explosives-laden drones sent against Leipzig/Halle Airport. Germany has attributed the failed attack to Russia, Britain has summoned a senior Russian diplomat, and European intelligence officials warn that Moscow is becoming increasingly willing to conduct violent operations inside allied countries.
Berlin’s Government Data Is Now in the DarknetHackers have published approximately 1.4 million files stolen from Berlin’s government network, after the city refused to pay the Rhysida ransomware group 30 Bitcoin, worth roughly €2 million. The 5.8-terabyte leak reportedly includes personnel records, timesheets, telephone numbers, passwords, contracts, and potentially information concerning critical infrastructure. Federal cybersecurity officials currently regard the attack as financially motivated and have found no evidence of state involvement.
Yet the consequences may become political regardless of the perpetrators’ original purpose. Germany’s capital allowed attackers to extract data for several days from systems serving its construction and transport administrations, then spent weeks determining what had been taken. Refusing the ransom was correct. Failing to protect the information in the first place was an institutional failure that criminals—and potentially hostile intelligence services—can now exploit indefinitely.
China and Russia Are Pushing Japan Underwater—Japan has formally begun exploring a submarine-launched hypersonic missile, seeking a survivable long-range strike capability against the expanding arsenals of China, Russia, and North Korea. Tokyo is considering either a vertically launched hypersonic ballistic missile or a ramjet-powered cruise missile fired through conventional torpedo tubes. Japan is already developing the Type 25 hypervelocity glide projectile, whose planned Block 2B variant could travel approximately 3,000 kilometers at Mach 5, alongside a separate hypersonic cruise-missile program.
The Maritime Self-Defense Force’s five Taigei-class boats possess 533-millimeter torpedo tubes but no vertical-launch cells, prompting a parallel debate over larger, potentially nuclear-powered submarines resembling those planned under AUKUS. That discussion would once have been politically impossible. North Korea’s nuclear program, Chinese maritime expansion, and suspected Russian assistance to Pyongyang are now pushing Japan toward a concealed second-strike capability able to survive an opening attack.
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