Document:Russia’s Information War in Germany: How Moscow is Changing German Minds
| II scrutinizing their German enemies. "it is possible, to glimpse the bacillus travelling through the body politic, weakening resolve and undermining confidence at critical moments" |
analysis by Hannes Adomeit dated 12 Nov 2018Example of: Integrity Initiative/Leak/2
Source: 'Anonymous' (Link)
Someone (presumably Chris Donnelly) has highlighted some of the sentences. This highlighting is not included here.
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Russia’s Information War in Germany: How Moscow is Changing German Minds
“I am not fond of the Germans by any means but, at the present time, it is more advantageous to use them than to challenge them... Everything teaches us to look upon Germany as our most reliable ally.” V.I. Lenin [1]
At the beginning of May 2014, the former Federal Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, celebrated his 70th birthday at a lavish party in Saint Petersburg. Schroeder, who has obtained several lucrative positions in the commercial world since leaving office, perhaps did not appreciate the significance of the location of the party, which was held in the Yusupov Palace, former home of the immensely wealthy Prince Felix Yusupov, one of the group of conspirators who murdered the monk Rasputin in the palace in 1916.
Yusupov and his co-conspirators, who included the Grand Duke Dmitri and Vladimir Purishkevich, a reactionary member of the Duma, had treated Rasputin to wine and cakes laced with poison. When they grew tired of waiting for the poison to work, they shot the monk, as he tried to crawl through a door into the main hall where, almost one hundred years later, Schroeder would receive his guests.
The reason Prince Yusupov and his friends were so keen to rid the world of “the blackest devil in Russian history,” as one of the conspirators called him,[2] was because they suspected that he was pro-German and part of an organised group of sympathisers and enemy agents, who had been trying to persuade the German-born Tsarina to use her influence to cause Russia to withdraw from the allied Entente against Germany. They hoped that the murder of Rasputin would be a strategic counter-stroke, which would send a clear signal that Russia was not about to change course.
Schroeder may not have appreciated the significance of the location but there can be little doubt that his chief guest did. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, native of Saint Petersburg and former KGB officer, no doubt appreciated the irony of the choice of location as he feted the man on whom he fancied he could rely to continue to do so much to reshape Germany’s strategic course, to ensure that it grew less dependent on the United States and that it remained ready to listen to the concerns of Russia.
When pictures of the party, which showed a glowing Schroeder gleefully embracing the Russian President, appeared in the German newspapers, there was widespread outrage. The party was held at a moment of supreme tension between Germany and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine. The West’s hesitant response to Putin’s invasion of Crimea had led to growing aggression by pro-Russian militia in eastern Ukraine and, only a few days earlier, four German members of an OSCE monitoring mission had been taken hostage. There was now an embarrassing diplomatic stand-off, with Putin publicly disclaiming any responsibility, as the leader of the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donetsk region announced plans for the creation of a breakaway ‘Donbass People’s Republic’ and demanded an exchange of the “NATO spies” for captured Russian fighters. [3]
Schroeder’s successor as Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was furious that her predecessor was flouting convention and, in doing so, clearly allowing himself to be used as a tool of Russian propaganda. Her anger and disdain for him were widely shared in the German media. The respected news magazine, Der Spiegel, accused Schroeder of “making a mockery of Berlin’s foreign policy”:
“There’s nothing you can do about your relatives,” the magazine’s editorial commented, “but you certainly have a choice when it comes to picking your friends. This sage wisdom also applies to Gerhard Schroeder, the former German leader and confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He himself can decide whom to embrace and with whom to celebrate his 70th birthday – after all, true friends stick together, even in the toughest of times. Normally one would call this strength of character.
“But when it comes to Schroeder and Putin in the context of the Ukraine crisis, things are a little more complicated. Gerhard Schroeder ought to know better. If the former German chancellor believes he can continue with his friendship as if nothing has happened, it’s a mistake. Schroeder’s own centre-left Social Democratic Party is currently the junior coalition partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, which is frantically trying to prevent his friend Vladimir from carrying out the policies of a power-drunk hegemon in Eastern Europe. In difficult times like these, a former German leader should, at least publicly, keep a safe distance from Putin.”
Schroeder, a long-standing apologist for Putin who once even spoke of his friend as a “flawless democrat”[4], certainly handed the Russian leader a useful propaganda gift with his birthday photographs. They helped to divert attention from Putin’s proxy war in Ukraine and create the impression that the Ukrainian crisis was just a hiccup, largely the concern of others and not something that should be allowed to interfere in the naturally good relations between Germany and Russia. Mr Schroeder had said as much only a couple of months earlier, claiming that Russia had some justifiable “fears about being encircled”, referring to “unhappy developments” on the fringes of what was once the Soviet Union and even comparing the Kremlin’s action in Crimea to his own government’s support for NATO’s bombing of Serbian targets during the Kosovo crisis in 1999.
“We sent our planes to Serbia and, together with the rest of NATO, they bombed a sovereign state without any UN Security Council backing,” he insisted. His comments quickly drew an icy response from Chancellor Merkel, who described them as “shameful.” Yet Gerhard Schroeder’s remarks and, indeed his understanding for Putin, are far from unique in Germany. They have found an echo across much of the political spectrum, in many sectors and often in the most surprising quarters. Sometimes this echo can be heard in remarks made by people who genuinely believe them, more often by people who have been compromised or those who should simply know better.
The reasons why the Kremlin is able to draw on such a significant reservoir of support in Germany are many and complicated. What is clear, however, is that Mr Putin and his advisors have long calculated that it would be well worth taking a serious interest in public opinion in Germany.
What Germany is facing now is not an ideological conflict but it does involve ideas and, as one of its most obvious casualties is the truth, it provides an object lesson in the extent of the damage that can be inflicted merely by the repetition of demonstrable falsehoods and distort
