Putin machine is tearing at Europe’s seams
European officials accuse Russian leader of attempting to undermine EU bloc
BERLIN— It was the kind of crime that sears the soul: the gang rape of a 13-year-old ethnic Russian girl by a trio of immigrants in Germany.
The first reports galvanized the Russian diaspora, bringing tens of thousands into the streets to protest against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy.
Trouble is, the attack never happened. It was just a teenager’s tall tale, police quickly concluded.
German officials say the controversy, known as the “Lisa Affair,” was ginned up by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine to undermine Merkel in the run-up to last month’s regional elections, which resulted in stinging losses for her party.
The worry now in Berlin, Brussels and beyond is that with Britain poised for a historic referendum on European Union membership and national votes in France and Germany next year, Putin will intensify efforts to divide the 28-member bloc.
“Russia is starting to weaponize electoral processes in Europe,” said Joerg Forbrig, senior program director of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. in Berlin. “The Lisa Affair was a real eye-opener.” The mobilization in Germany shows a reach by the Kremlin into the political workings of Europe’s largest economy that goes far beyond the frequent policy hazings meted out by its English-language media arms, RT television and the Sputnik news service.
Putin’s longtime foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, broke with diplomatic convention in late January to accuse Germany of a coverup in the Lisa Affair. That outraged Merkel’s government, prompted Lavrov’s coun- terpart to issue a rare personal rebuke and led the chancellery to order the BND spy agency to probe the Kremlin’s role in the scandal, the officials in Berlin said.
Germany already has a special unit tasked with countering Russian disinformation and it works on the assumption that Putin’s goal is to topple EU-friendly governments and replace them with pro-Russia parties, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, according to the officials.
In France, this support is financial. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front has received funding from a Russian lender and is seeking
25 million ($35.9 million Canadi- an), from others to bankroll its 2017 presidential campaign.
Le Pen, Putin’s most prominent political supporter in Western Europe, is currently polling second and though her party failed to win a single region in December elections, it received 6.8 million votes, the most ever.
That shows the continent is moving toward a political realignment more favourable to the Kremlin, according to Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian multimillionaire whose former employees played major roles in Ukraine’s rebellion and who now advocates for closer ties with Europe’s far right.
“This is the start of the end of the system,” Malofeev said in Moscow.
The next major arena for Russian meddling is the U.K., which will hold a referendum in June on whether to stay in the EU.
And with the vote too close to call, the Russian Embassy in London took the unusual step of questioning the competence of its host nation’s elected leader.
After Prime Minister David Cameron defended membership in the bloc by noting it allowed Britain to lead Europe’s response to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, the embassy shot back via Twitter, saying dragging Russia into the Brexit debate suggested Cameron “cannot win the argument on its merits.”
A major Brexit cheerleader is Sputnik, which warned recently that Britain would suffer mass sex attacks much like the ones in Cologne that preceded the Lisa Affair if it doesn’t leave the EU, citing Nigel Farage, a Putin admirer who heads the U.K. Independence Party.
The Kremlin mouthpiece took a similar tack in the Netherlands, where voters rejected an EU treaty with Ukraine.
Sputnik hailed the defeat as a step toward “Nexit,” in a story based on one interview with a regional Dutch reporter.