Dansk Folkepartis Ungdom has expelled 11 members with ties to Russian Orthodox churches in Aarhus and Copenhagen. The party says the group acted as an organized faction inside the youth wing.
The expulsions were carried out on May 28, according to DR. Kenneth Kristensen Berth, secretariat and organization chief for Dansk Folkeparti, confirmed the decision to the broadcaster.
Berth told DR that the 11 had acted as a group within the group. He said they held separate activities and prayer meetings, and tried to place members in prominent posts in Dansk Folkepartis Ungdom. According to Berth, that is not accepted in the party, and the group is no longer part of it.
Berlingske reports that two of the expelled members had already been elected local chairs in DFU’s East and West Jutland branches. DFU chair Mads-Magnus Damm told the newspaper the group appeared to infiltrate the association by running for those posts. He described them as holding together and acting as a bloc, separating themselves from other members.
Damm also told Berlingske that all eleven turned up together at a DFU Christmas meeting last year. They then withdrew from the other participants to carry out what he described as a religious arrangement of some kind. That episode, he said, reinforced the leadership’s impression of a coordinated group.
Berth told DR the shared trait among the expelled was a connection to the Russian Orthodox churches in Aarhus and Copenhagen. He declined to say whether they had Russian backgrounds. Berlingske describes the group as mostly young men, some of them Danish converts to Russian Orthodoxy, and says it has identified four of the eleven.
Party rejects Russia framing
According to Berth, the issue was not the church affiliation itself, but the members’ conduct as an organized faction with internal ambitions. Berlingske cites Emil Saggau, a church historian at Lund University, who says the question is not whether Russian Orthodox churches in Denmark are connected to the Russian regime, but how closely.
Asked by DR whether the party struggles with an image of not distancing itself sufficiently from Russia, Berth rejected the premise. He pointed to several Ukrainians who want to join Dansk Folkeparti. He also said he did not believe the expulsions had involved a security risk, after DR noted Berlingske’s report that one expelled member displayed a Nazi symbol in a photograph.
Berth told DR that future DFU members will be examined more closely. He declined to explain how the vetting will work, calling it a matter for the party rather than the press.
On the timing, Damm told Berlingske the decision was taken two days before DFU’s annual meeting in May, after the leadership concluded the group had infiltrated the organization. Norwegian outlet ABC Nyheter, drawing on Berlingske’s account, presents the expulsions as a response to rapid takeover attempts in the months before that meeting.
