Moscow's
Fifth Column: German Populists Forge Ties with Russia
By
Melanie Amann and Pavel Lokshin
April
27, 2016 – 03:08 PM
The
right-wing populist, anti-refugee Alternative for Germany party is
establishing ever-closer ties with Moscow. Now, the AfD's youth wing
has forged an alliance with the youth movement of Putin's party
United Russia. The AfD is also courting Russian-German voters.
Marcus Pretzell is
waiting. He's a member of the European Parliament with the right-wing
populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and he's sitting on the
podium at the Yalta International Economic Forum, an event hosted by
the Russian government at a resort on the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Pretzell has been seated directly next to the moderator. The AfD
politician, who is head of the party in North Rhine-Westphalia, its
largest state chapter, is the guest of honor from Europe. His
presence is intended to send the message that Russia is not
internationally isolated.
For the hour and a
half during which Pretzell sits on the stage, he's little more than a
wallflower. Through his headphones, he listens to an interpreter
translating the words of an illustrious group of top Russian
officials who few German politicians would be keen to share a stage
with. Five of the eight panel members are on the sanctions lists of
the European Union and the United States for their involvement in the
illegal annexation of Crimea. They include men like Sergey Aksyonov,
prime minister of Crimea, and Yevgeny Bushmin, a close confidant of
the Kremlin leadership.
The panel host then
finally asks Pretzell to speak. "We at Alternative for Germany
represent not only a threat to the Ukrainian government, but also to
the German government," he proudly announces. The audience
applauds. He then goes on to say that good economic relations with
Russia "are in the interest of the German people" and that
sanctions should be lifted immediately. The applause grows. In
Russia, the moderator adds, people have the impression that the
German people are of the same opinion as Pretzell. "Marcus, you
have made 140 million new friends today."
A Natural Partner
Russia also has many
friends in the AfD. Leading party officials are pursuing a clearly
pro-Russian path and are trying to establish tight relations with
people in President Vladimir Putin's circle. The right-wing populists
are undeterred by the Kremlin's anti-liberal, anti-American and
homophobic ideology. On the contrary: For large parts of the AfD
party base, those factors appear to make Russia an attractive
partner. At the same time, the AfD, with its critical stance toward
the EU and NATO, also appears to be a natural partner for Putin. Now,
though, the relationship is advancing past the stage of discussions
and conferences: The youth wing of the AfD is forming more formal
ties with the youth organization of Putin's United Russia party.
Leading AfD
politicians like deputy head Alexander Gauland have pursued a
pro-Russian course since the party's founding three years ago. They
have accepted invitations to conferences featuring Putin's confidants
and those who influence his ideology and they have forged alliances
with Eastern European nationalists loyal to the Kremlin as well as
with traditionally Russia-friendly right-wing populist parties in
Western Europe like France's Front National and the Freedom Party of
Austria (FPÖ) -- which this weekend won the first-round of Austrian
presidential elections. AfD is currently planning a conference
together with the Russian Embassy in Potsdam in June.
At its national
party conference at the beginning of May, the AfD is expected to root
its approach to Russia in its party doctrine, in the form of votes on
several resolutions calling for Germany to leave NATO. Björn Höcke,
a prominent member of the party's ultra-right wing, last week
announced his support for the resolutions.
There is currently
no proof that AfD receives financial support from Moscow. The party's
treasurer, Klaus Fohrmann, categorically denies such speculation. But
prior to a trio of state elections in March, the party did receive
generous donations in-kind in the form of thousands of election signs
and millions of copies of a free campaign newspaper promoting the
AfD's anti-refugee platforms. The patron has remained anonymous, and
Fohrmann concedes he cannot rule out with certainty that Russian
money may have been involved.
Ideological
Influence
Be that as it may,
the ideological influence wielded by Putin's allies on the AfD is far
more significant. Few of the Russia fans within the party have the
years of political experience amassed by Gauland, who had been an
influential member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic
Union for 40 years before bolting the party. Often enough they are
foreign policy neophytes like history teacher Höcke or lawyer
Pretzell, who just want to dabble in global politics and don't
recognize the degree to which they are playing into the hands of
Putin's government.
That is especially
true of the Young Alternative (JA), AfD's youth arm, which isn't shy
when it comes to embracing pro-Russian circles. Even back in 2014,
the JA state chapter in Lower Saxony invited senior officials from
the Russian Embassy in Berlin for a meeting. An item in JA's member
newsletter stated there had been agreement at the meeting that
responsibility for the "disastrous escalation of the situation
in Ukraine clearly lies with the scarcely forward-looking and
extremely uneven EU foreign policy."
JA head Markus
Frohnmaier often takes trips to regions in which NATO is considered
to be an aggressor and Russia to be the last hope for a "multipolar
world." In mid-October 2014, for example, he visited Belgrade,
where he attended the celebrations surrounding the 70th anniversary
of the liberation of Yugoslavia from its German occupiers. Putin also
attended, and to welcome him, the city had been decked out in
pro-Russian signs like, "Putin is a Serb." There,
Frohnmaier met up with members of the far-right, critics of the
United States and Kremlin allies. Last summer, he took a trip to
contested eastern Ukraine to visit the "Donbass Forum,"
where Frohnmaier discussed "Peace for Ukraine" together
with Manuel Ochsenreiter, a prominent right-wing writer with the New
Right movement (a play on the New Left of the 1960s), and Jean-Luc
Schaffhauser of France's Front National.
The trend continued
during Frohnmaier's most recent trip to Crimea -- to a conference
attended by 1,000 participants, but with only 70 foreign guests. Two
were politicians with Austria's FPÖ. The Russian organizers paid for
his trip to Yalta, which, he says, is "standard practice."
But the Young
Alternative's most important foreign policy contact to date took
place just last week. Last Wednesday afternoon, Frohnmaier and his JA
co-head Sven Tritschler, sat down over a beer in Berlin. They had
just had a successful meeting with a partner: Robert Schlegel, a
member of the Duma, the Russian parliament, and a leading official
with Putin's United Russia party. Schlegel and the JA leaders reached
agreement on a new partnership between the Young Guard, the youth
wing of Putin's party, and its counterpart in the AfD. "Euro
critical and sovereigntist movements are gaining in strength across
the entire European continent," says Frohnmaier, adding that it
is "self-evident that these activities be pooled into a new
youth network." Russia, he says, also has to be a part of it.
Putin's Young Guard
already maintains alliances with partners abroad in countries like
Kazakhstan and Serbia. According to its charter, its aim is the
"integration of the youth into the process of building a
democratic and socially just society," followed by the
"conveyance of patriotism and national pride."
Anti-Western
Sentiment and Homophobia
In practice,
however, the 150,000-member strong Youth Guard is better known for
its anti-Western and homophobic propaganda. In February in Moscow, on
the occasion of the US Presidents' Day holiday, they mounted a
cartoon exhibition on the "crimes" committed by American
leaders. Further areas of focus of the Young Guard include the
defamation of opposition politicians as "lesbians, gays and
transvestites." Last year, they even collected signatures
opposing an online self-help group for gay and lesbian youth.
Schlegel, himself a
former spokesman for Nashi, a now defunct Kremlin-aligned youth
movement, travels around the world on behalf of Putin's party and he
is a popular guest in places like Belgrade and Damascus. Only in
Berlin, Schlegel laments, has political access become difficult. He
says the situation has worsened, particularly since the death of
Philipp Missfelder, the late parliamentarian from Merkel's
conservative CDU who had focused on foreign policy. Missfelder died
unexpectedly in July at the age of 35 after suffering from a
pulmonary embolism. Schlegel says the politician had always been
willing to listen to him.
Fortunately for
Schlegel, the Young Alternative is now standing by to provide him
with a sympathetic ear. Frohnmaier is little disturbed by the Kremlin
youths' ideological orientation. "Despite Western reservations
about the Russian political system, it is unquestionable that
President Putin and his party enjoy the support of the majority of
Russians," he says. Besides, the 25-year-old adds, "our
country isn't like some kindergartner in the world" -- it needs
to finally "represent its vital national interests" in the
foreign policy arena.
The close ties
between Moscow and the AfD also run through Germany's sizeable
Russian-German community. Germany is home to 2.5 million
Spätaussiedler, or "late repatriates," ethnic Germans who
had lived in Russia for generations, many of whom have maintained
close ties to their former home country. AfD has actively courted
this population, even setting up a network within the party of these
so-called "Russlanddeutsche." The strategy has borne fruit,
particularly in the state of Baden-Württemberg, where the AfD
garnered 42 percent of the vote in Villingen-Schwenningen and 52
percent Wertheim, both cities that are home to large populations of
Russian-Germans.
Orthodox Ties
Particularly
interesting for Putin is the fact that many Russlanddeutsche can
still vote back in their former home of Russia. Duma elections are
scheduled to take place this September. Using the AfD and its youth
arm, the JA, seems like an obvious way to approach these voters.
The German
right-wing populists also maintain contacts to representatives of the
Russian and Serbian Orthodox churches. They know each other from
having attended protests against the education curriculum plans
promoted by the the state government of Baden-Württemberg, led by a
coalition pairing the Green Party and the Social Democrats. They also
attended the "March for Life" demonstrations against
abortion together. "Many orthodox values have no resonance
within the old parties," Frohnmaier explains. "We give
these people a new political home."
AfD's deputy party
head Gauland says he has "no reservations whatsoever" about
the alliance between JA and the Putin youth. After all, he himself
traveled to Russia at the end of 2015 on a trip paid for by the St.
Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, which is financially backed by
a Putin-loyal oligarch. In St. Petersburg, Gauland met with members
of the Duma, a personal advisor to Putin and Alexander Dugin, a
neo-fascist, anti-Western ideologist whose ideas are taken seriously
by the Kremlin. Gauland says Dugin is a pleasant conversation
partner. Too bad, the politician says, that Dugin would like to
restore czarist traditions.
Gauland also knew of
Pretzell's plan to travel to the conference in Crimea and even wished
his colleague "good luck." After all, he says, "Crimea
was already Russian once and now it is Russian again. And it will
never return to Ukraine." Germany must accept this reality, he
adds.
The Coming Foreign
Policy Battle
Understandably
enough, Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, has a
different view. He accuses Pretzell and Frohnmaier of having traveled
into the region without Ukrainian permission. "Illegal entry
into Crimea is no misdemeanor -- it's a serious crime," says
Melnyk. Pretzell entered Crimea on a Russian visa -- the purpose of
his visit was listed as "research and technical relations."
Because Germany, too, considers the annexation of Crimea to be a
violation of international law, Melnyk filed a protest note with the
German Foreign Ministry, aksing Berlin to "undertake all
necessary measures to prevent that kind of violation of Ukrainian
laws in the future." The AfD politicians are facing a possible
five-year ban on entering Ukraine.
But not all members
of the AfD leadership are pleased with the activities of the
pro-Russian faction. At the party conference this weekend in
Stuttgart, foreign policy is expected to be one of the more divisive
issues. "In my assessment, AfD's approach to Russia is too
imbalanced at the moment," says Alice Weidel, a member of the
party's national executive committee. "It's important to me that
the party isn't forced into a one-sided strategy on this issue."
An economist by training, Weidel also warns against withdrawing from
NATO. "We have enjoyed prosperity and peace for decades. We owe
this to the Euro-Atlantic community," she says.
But Frauke Petry,
head of the national party, is following a different course. In a
recent letter to party members, she began paving the way for a new
strategic orientation toward the east. In it, Petry writes that the
party should ally with euroskeptic forces in European Parliament,
also referring explicitly to the Europe of Nations and Freedom
parliamentary group, which includes Front National and FPÖ among its
members.
These parties all
have at least one thing in common: Their friendship with Russia.
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