Putin beordrar styrkor att gå in i Ukraina - INVASION NU (2022-02-24)

Dokument: Kreml vill bygga ryssvänligt block i Tyskland
Kreml har som mål att skapa en koalition i Tyskland mellan de två ytterkantspartierna AFD och Die Linke, visar läckta dokument från Kreml enligt Washington Post.

Det långsiktiga syftet är att urholka det europeiska stödet till Ukraina. Strateger i Kreml ska till och med ha hittat på ett AFD-manifest där man hävdar att sanktioner mot Ryssland går emot Tysklands intressen.

Både AFD och Die Linke är kritiska till att Tyskland exporterar vapen till Ukraina, och har uppmanat regeringen att hålla sig utanför. I dokumenten finns det inget som tyder på att ryska strateger har varit i kontakt med de tyska partierna.

BERLIN — When 13,000 demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate on Feb. 25 to call for an end to weapons supplies to Ukraine, the protest was led by Sahra Wagenknecht, a member of parliament for Germany’s far-left Die Linke party and a firebrand with national ambitions. Wagenknecht decried the prospect that German tanks, soon to be delivered to Ukraine, could once again be used to shoot at “Russian women and men.”

“We don’t want Germany to be drawn deeper into this war,” she said, as she called for the creation of a new peace movement and condemned the bloodshed in Ukraine, without mentioning Russia’s invasion.

Among the crowd in Berlin was Jürgen Elsässer, editor of a far-right-wing magazine, and dozens of members of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party who cheered Wagenknecht’s calls to cut off Ukraine. Elsässer’s Compact magazine had recently declared on its cover that Wagenknecht was: “The best chancellor — a candidate for the left and the right.”

The coming together of political opposites in Berlin under the banner of peace had been percolating for months, though the union remains ad hoc and unofficial. But marrying Germany’s extremes is an explicit Kremlin goal and was first proposed by senior officials in Moscow in early September, according to a trove of sensitive Russian documents largely dated from July to November that were obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post.


Sahra Wagenknecht, a member of parliament in Germany’s far-left Die Linke party, makes a speech in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on Feb. 25 at a demonstration against weapons shipments to Ukraine. (Steffi Loos/Getty Images)
The documents record meetings between Kremlin officials and Russian political strategists, and the Kremlin’s orders for the strategists to focus on Germany to build antiwar sentiment in Europe and dampen support for Ukraine. The files also chronicle the strategists’ efforts to implement these plans and their reports back to the Kremlin. The documents do not contain any material that records communications between the Russian strategists and any allies in Germany. But interviews show at least one person close to Wagenknecht and several AfD members were in contact with Russian officials at the time the plans were being drawn up.

The documents — details of which were broadly corroborated by officials in Western governments — show for the first time the Kremlin’s direct attempts to interfere in German politics by seeking to forge a new coalition among Wagenknecht, the far left and the AfD, as well as to support protests by extremists on the left and right against the German government.

Dokumenten registrerar möten mellan Kreml-tjänstemän och ryska politiska strateger, och Kremls order till strategerna att fokusera på Tyskland för att bygga upp antikrigskänsla i Europa och dämpa stödet till Ukraina. Dokumenten beskriver också strategers ansträngningar att genomföra dessa planer och deras rapporter till Kreml. Dokumenten innehåller inget material som registrerar kommunikation mellan de ryska strategerna och eventuella allierade i Tyskland. Men intervjuer visar att minst en person nära Wagenknecht och flera AfD-medlemmar var i kontakt med ryska tjänstemän när planerna utarbetades.