WASHINGTON — The war in Ukraine that has pitted Russia against the West is being waged not just with tanks,
artillery and troops. Increasingly, Moscow has brought to bear different kinds
of weapons, according to American and European officials: money, ideology and
disinformation.
Even as the Obama administration and its European
allies try to counter Russia’s military intervention across its border, they
have found themselves struggling at home against what they see as a concerted
drive by Moscow to leverage its economic power, finance European political
parties and movements, and spread alternative accounts of the conflict.
The Kremlin’s goal seems to be to sow division,
destabilize the European Union and possibly fracture what until now has been a
relatively unified, if sometimes fragile, consensus against Russian aggression.
At the very least, if Russia can peel off even a single member of the European
Union, it could in theory prevent the renewal later this month of economic
sanctions that are scheduled to expire absent the unanimous agreement of all
member states.
President Obama arrived in Germany on Sunday for a
Group of 7 summit meeting at which he plans to rally European allies
to stand firm against Russia, especially as violence flares again in eastern
Ukraine despite a shaky cease-fire. In the days leading up to his trip, both
American and European officials publicly voiced concerns about President Vladimir V. Putin’s subterranean — and sometimes more overt — efforts
to win allies in the West.
“As it tries to rattle the cage, the Kremlin is
working hard to buy off and co-opt European political forces, funding both
right-wing and left-wing anti-systemic parties throughout Europe,” Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in a speech last month at
the Brookings Institution in
Washington. “President Putin sees such political forces as useful tools to be
manipulated, to create cracks in the European body politic which he can then
exploit.”
That is a conclusion shared by Britain’s government.
“On
the question of Russian money, yes, of course we are concerned about what is
clearly a Kremlin strategy of trying to pick off, shall we say, the brethren
who may be less committed or more vulnerable in the run-up to the June
decision,” said the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, last week. “It
will not have escaped the Kremlin’s notice that this is a unanimity process and
they only need one.”
Whether the strategy will succeed
remains uncertain.
American officials and European diplomats said they
were confident for now that the sanctions would be renewed at a European Union
summit meeting to be held in Brussels on June 25 and 26. Germany, the union’s
most dominant member, supports extending sanctions until next January, and
smaller nations may be loath to defy Berlin. But there is no appetite for
adding more sanctions, as some American officials would like.
Russia’s efforts to influence the West have taken on
different forms.
Russia has traditionally used its status
as an energy supplier to sway customers in Europe, and it is now pressing
countries in southeastern Europe, including struggling
Greece, to support a new natural gas pipeline project with promises of economic benefits.
Russian oligarchs have long kept so much of their money in Cypriot banks that
the island nation is seen as a financial outpost for Moscow.
For several years, Russia has paid for a
government-sponsored insert in newspapers and websites in 26 countries
(including in The New York Times). More recently, it has proposed expanding RT,
its international television network, which broadcasts in English and three
other languages and delights in pointing out the foibles of the West, to French
and German.
American and European officials have accused Moscow of financing green
movements in Europe to
encourage protests against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a move intended
to defend Russia’s gas industry. And a shadowy “troll farm”
in St. Petersburg uses
Twitter to plant fake stories about chemical spills or Ebola outbreaks in the West.
Since long before the Ukraine crisis, money has been a
means for Mr. Putin to try to shape events in the West.
After Chancellor Gerhard Schröder
stepped down in Germany, he was given a
lucrative position with Gazprom, the Russian state energy giant. When President
George W. Bush was in office, Mr. Putin asked “would it help you” if Donald L.
Evans, Mr. Bush’s close friend and former commerce secretary, were given a
high-paying Russian corporate job. (Mr. Bush rejected the idea.)
Russia appears to be getting some traction lately in
countries like Greece, Hungary, the Czech Republic and even Italy and France.
Not only is it aligning itself with the leftists traditionally affiliated with
Moscow since the Cold War, but it is making common cause with far-right forces
rebelling against the rise of the European Union that are sympathetic to Mr.
Putin’s attack on what he calls the West’s moral decline.
The most prominent example has been the National Front
in France, which under Marine Le Pen has confirmed taking an $11.7
million loan from
the First Czech-Russian Bank in Moscow, which has been tied to the Kremlin. She
has denied a news report that the money was just the first installment of an
eventual $50 million in loans to help her party through a presidential election
in 2017.
Austria’s far-right Freedom Party denied charges of
dependency on the Kremlin, allegations made by its left-wing rival, the Social
Democratic Party after the Freedom leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, posted
pictures of himself and other party leaders at a conference in Moscow that
called for an end to sanctions against Russia. Mr. Strache said in a statement
that “we are convinced of our neutrality and we do not get financial donations
or credits” from Russia.
The German tabloid Bild reported that the anti-euro
Alternative for Germany Party had benefited from cheap gold sales from Russia,
which the party denied. There have been investigations into some members of
Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party for any financial ties to Russia. And there
have been similar accusations and inquiries in Bulgaria, with its far-right
Attack Party; in Slovakia, with its People’s Party; and in the Baltic States,
especially with Latvia’s pro-Russian party.
Far-right parties seen as aligned with Moscow vote
against resolutions in the European Parliament critical of Russia and have sent
observers to referendums and elections in separatist-held regions of Ukraine
like Crimea and Donetsk, alongside members of some far-left parties like Die
Linke in Germany and KKE in Greece.
The Political Capital Institute, a research
organization in Budapest, which first documented Russian interest in Eastern
European far-right parties in 2009, reported in March that Moscow’s interest
had now spread to Western European countries as well. It listed 15 far-right
European partiesas
“committed” to Russia.
The institute’s report said the newfound affiliations
“are not necessarily financial, as commonly assumed,” but may involve
professional and organizational help. Either way, it said, “Russian influence
in the affairs of the far right is a phenomenon seen all over Europe as a key
risk for Euro-Atlantic integration.”
Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign
minister of Sweden, said the trend was a major concern for Europe. It is “very
clear that the Kremlin has every interest in fracturing Europe in whatever ways
possible,” he said by email. “And it actively seeks to play on every division
that it sees.”
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, has expressed similar worries about what he calls Russia’s
“ability to employ other instruments of power” besides armed force.
President Putin considers NATO to be a threat and will look for opportunities to
discredit and eventually undermine the alliance,” he said in an email forwarded
by a spokesman. “Putin’s ultimate objective is to fracture NATO.”
But Fiona Hill, a former national intelligence officer
on Russia and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said that with the
exception of Ms. Le Pen’s party in France, the assertions about Russia
financing European parties seemed based more on speculation than facts.
“The question
is how much hard evidence does anyone have?” she asked. “And it’s useful for
the Russians themselves not to refute rumors and maybe even perpetrate some of
them. They want everyone to think everyone is corrupt, everyone can be
influenced.”
Either way, David Kramer, a former assistant secretary
of state under Mr. Bush and now a scholar at the McCain Institute for
International Leadership in Washington, said he thought that any Russian
financing of European parties could backfire by alienating the governing elite
in Europe.
“It is a big concern,” he said, “but I
wonder if at the end of the day they’re going to shoot themselves in the foot
and waste this money.”
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