Germany's mainstream conservatives led by Friedrich Merz won the country's national election, ensuring that Ukraine has an even stronger supporter in the European Union's largest country and creating hopes for renewal in an economic powerhouse that has been badly battered in recent years.

The half-naked protester was filmed defacing remnants of the Berlin Wall kept outside the German embassy in Ukraine capital Kyiv on Sunday with a Hitler mustache and swept-over cropped dark hair

Mohammad Azmouz, a Syrian barber living in Berlin, said casting his first ever vote on Sunday at the age of 57 was an indescribable feeling.

Germany faces its second change of leader in less than four years after the head of the center-right opposition won Sunday’s election.

A conservative alliance made up of the CDU and CSU is set to lead Germany again, but the new coalition government will have to confront pressing challenges.

A Syrian refugee arrested over the stabbing of a tourist at Berlin's Holocaust memorial had been planning "to kill Jews", prosecutors said on Saturday, the day before an election which is expected to see a surge in support for the anti-migrant AfD.

Germany’s political system is set up to exclude extremists. Yet the country is waking up to a new political reality that has lurched to the right with the once outcast Alternative for Germany (AfD) party now firmly established in German politics.

Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats took the highest portion of a record number of votes. An ascendant far right, crumbling international order and sluggish German economy face the incoming chancellor.

Friedrich Merz's CDU party emerged as the largest party in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, earning 28.6% of the vote.

South Korea's Industry Minister Ahn Duk-geun will travel to Washington D.C. from Wednesday through to Friday to press again for an exemption from U.S. steel tariffs and discuss ways to boost cooperation in energy and shipbuilding, his ministry said.