From Russia, with love and controversy
President’s appearance at Austrian minister’s wedding creates a stir
President Vladimir Putin of Russia has always shown a mastery for playing to the cameras, whether posing bare-chested on horseback, dancing with Tartars or riding Harleys with bikers.
On Saturday, that command was on display again, this time as the Russian leader made a brief personal appearance in the Styrian Alps at the wedding of Austria’s foreign minister, before continuing north to Germany where he was to hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Putin’s brief visit — he stayed for an hour and 20 minutes — created a buzz throughout the alpine nation and beyond. Not all of it was positive.
Opposition politicians and Ukranian leaders said the Russian president’s presence could harm Austria’s foreign policy at a time when it holds the European Union’s rotating presidency.
“How should the EU council presidency meet the demand to build bridges and act as an honest broker if the foreign minister and the federal chancellor are so obviously on one side?” said Andreas Schieder, parliamentary leader of Austria’s So- cialist Party. Before the Kremlin announced that Putin would attend the wedding of Austria’s foreign minister, Karin Kneissl, 53, in a vineyard in Gamlitz, the festivities had already taken on the sheen of a political event. Among the other guests were Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria and Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the country’s far-right Freedom Party and vice chancellor, along with other members of the Cabinet.
Kneissl’s ministry said the event was a private affair and insisted that it would not influ- ence the country’s foreign policy.
An independent, Kneissl was nominated to her post after the Freedom Party joined Kurz’s government as the junior partner in December.
A year earlier, Strache and leading members of his party had travelled to Moscow to sign a co-operation agreement with Putin’s United Russia Party. They have called repeatedly for an end to the economic sanctions against Russia, enacted in response to its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
“I don’t normally comment on high society, but if Austria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is forced to justify itself and assure that its foreign policy course will not change in light of this ‘private’ visit, then things have taken on an interesting new form that brings a sad smile to my face,” Pavlo Klimkin, the foreign minister of Ukraine, wrote on Twitter.
This year, Austria declined to join a co-ordinated effort of Western countries in expelling Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain, citing the country’s long-standing neutrality.
Putin drew most of the attention Saturday, though he was only one of about 100 people invited to the ceremony, held on a terrace overlooking the steep, leafy vineyards on the southern side of Austria’s Alps.
In keeping with local custom, the bride wore a white dirndl, a traditional dress common in southern Germany and Austria with a tight bodice and full skirt. She and her groom, Wolfgang Meilinger, 54, arrived in an open carriage adorned with bunches of sunflowers that matched her own bright yellow wedding bouquet.
After the ceremony, the deep voices of a Cossack choir that the Russian president flew in with him as a wedding gift, could be heard ringing across the rolling hills of the Southern Alps.
The couple — whose “just married” poster, on the back of a white Volkswagen Beetle, was signed by the Russian president — were not the only ones celebrating Saturday.
“The international advertising for Austria and the Styria as a tourist destination is priceless,” Strache, the vice-chancellor, wrote on Facebook, insisting that Putin’s presence would strengthen Austria’s position as a bridge-builder. “You couldn’t have a better advertisement for Austria and its wonderful nature, its heavenly countryside and its friendliness to guests!”