Emilia Mitskevych, a Ukrainian opera singer living in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, was in her final year of studies when Russia invaded her country in February 2022.
Four years after fleeing Kiev, she now works at the Magdeburg opera house and finally feels settled in her new home. But her hard-earned peace and stability is under threat from a new source: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The largely rural eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, of which Magdeburg is the capital, holds elections to its regional parliament on Sunday.
The campaign is being closely watched, as for the first time in Germany's post-war history, a far-right party stands on the verge of entering - and even leading - a state government.
The result of the election is sure to have major ramifications on the national political scene in Berlin. But for people such as Emilia, the effects of an AfD victory would be much more immediately felt.
The party's controversial manifesto specifically takes aim at Ukrainians, who form the largest group of foreign nationals in the state. At the end of 2025, the Saxony-Anhalt statistical office registered 38,950 Ukrainians, representing around 2% of the state's 2.1 million residents.
The AfD's programme commits to campaigning for Ukrainians' war refugee status to be withdrawn - a decision that could only be taken at the EU level - claiming that fighting is ongoing "only in the east of the country" while "large swathes of land in Ukraine are safe."
"It's completely wrong," says Nadja Pilipcuk, a practicing doctor who serves on the board of the German-Ukrainian Association Saxony-Anhalt.
Pilipcuk, who has lived in Magdeburg since 1997, tells dpa she has witnessed missile attacks on several visits to her home city of Lviv, 80 kilometres from the Polish border.
"There's not a city in Ukraine that hasn't experienced that," she explains. "Kiev is being bombed every day and night, Odessa is being destroyed."
Emilia has experienced Russian bombing too while visiting family. "I was in Kiev at the beginning of August, and I was really afraid to die," she says. "If the missile hits your house, you're dead."
What does she think of the AfD's claim that most of Ukraine is safe? "I would gladly invite these people to visit Kiev," she answers, calling the party "populist and pro-Russian."
When Ukrainians first started arriving in Magdeburg in 2022, the response from the city's residents was "outstanding," says Pilipcuk, relating the story of a patient who offered his flat up to refugees.
Emilia is also quick to praise the Germans who helped her settle in the country after fleeing Ukraine in the first week of the war, an experience she visibly struggles to recount.
Her story is one of hardship and resilience, a tale familiar to many of the well over 5 million Ukrainians estimated to have fled the country since 2022.
Determined to finish her studies, she contacted conservatoires across Germany and Poland, and ended up finding a place in Hanover.
Living alone, she went through a "really hard time," but received support from her teachers and fellow students, the 29-year-old explains. "Music and singing, it was the only thing that kept me alive."
After graduating from university, Emilia auditioned for a position with the opera house in Magdeburg, and was delighted to be accepted.
Since 2024, she has built a life in the city, performing in operas and musicals, and conducting an ensemble made up of Ukrainian women, while the bloody conflict in her home country drags on.
But the mood in Germany has changed since 2022, says Pilipcuk. Germans are increasingly weary of the war, and anti-refugee sentiment is being fed by constant media coverage of attacks by migrants, she argues.
Magdeburg, notably, was the site of a horrific car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in 2024 that left six dead and hundreds injured.
The incident came in the build-up to the national parliamentary election, in which the AfD surged to second place on 20.8% of the vote. In Saxony-Anhalt, the party's share was 37.1%.
The AfD's manifesto for the upcoming state election suggests Ukrainians should be encouraged to resettle in western Ukraine through a "remigration offensive," a term popularized by far-right groups for the mass return or deportation of immigrants to their homeland.
The European Union, which has prolonged its temporary protection to Ukrainians fleeing Russia's war until March 2028, is clear-eyed about the fact that one day, they will be expected to return home - but not until it is safe to do so.
For Pilipcuk, however, the AfD's manifesto can be summed up in two words: "foreigners out."
"It's pure hate against migrants," she continues. "Whatever goes wrong, or whatever people don't like in the country, it's always the migrants' fault. It's utter nonsense."
Portrayals in far-right circles of Ukrainians as benefit scroungers, dependent on German taxpayer-funded welfare, are clearly a sore spot. Ukrainians do not just want to "exist," says Emilia. "We really want to work."
Olena Salii, who fled to Saxony-Anhalt from the Odessa region in 2022, says political parties are "spreading narratives about Ukrainians that picture us in a negative light."
"We are trying our best to build a new life here, to work, to learn, to contribute to society and to integrate," she adds.
Germany's long bureaucratic processes have slowed the integration of Ukrainians into the labour market, Pilipcuk further explains. "I know a lot of skilled colleagues who already speak very good German, but can not yet work."
Among the more unconventional parts of the AfD's manifesto is a commitment to maintain Russian language classes and restarting school exchange programmes with Russian schools, as "personal contact with Russians is the best way to counter the current campaign of incitement and the fuelling of conflicts."
To critics, this is just the latest evidence of the party's long-suspected sympathies for Moscow. AfD politicians have raised eyebrows with visits to Russia even after 2022, which they have defended as in the interest of dialogue and diplomacy.
Emilia believes the experience of Russian school exchanges would be "very traumatic" for Ukrainian children in Saxony-Anhalt. In Pilipcuk's eyes, the proposal is an example of nostalgia for Russia in the regions of the former socialist East Germany, decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.
"Some people say that everything was better back then," the doctor says. "I think things were better because people were young and healthy, and now they're old and sick."
The AfD is not the only party campaigning against Ukraine in Saxony-Anhalt. The populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which could emerge as a kingmaker if it secures enough votes to enter the state parliament, is a vocal opponent of German support for Kiev.
In front of Magdeburg's cathedral, a BSW poster depicts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky being showered with money by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. "End the rip-off," the poster reads.
Germany's relations with Russia have risen back to the top of the agenda in the final days of the campaign, after Merz's government officially blamed Moscow for an incident in August involving an explosives-laden drone at Leipzig/Halle airport - a stone's throw from the Saxony-Anhalt state border.
Whether the dispute could draw undecided voters away from the AfD remains to be seen. But for Ukrainians in the state, there is no doubt that the election campaign has left its mark.
Salii, who leads a social project for refugees in the city of Halle, says she knows some of her compatriots are considering moving away in the case of an AfD victory. "They fear that they will not find here the respect, understanding and feeling of safety that they need to build a future."
As for Emilia, she is concerned that political changes could make her future in Germany less secure, and admits she would consider looking for a job in another city if the AfD targets her opera house in its cultural campaigns.
"Everything is possible," she says - unwittingly using the AfD's own slogan for Sunday's election in Saxony-Anhalt.
