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 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 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.”
Kremlin
Reach
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 cover-up in the Lisa Affair. That outraged Merkel’s government,
prompted Lavrov’s counterpart 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.
Funding Le
Pen
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 euros 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 favorable 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.
Brexit, Nexit
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 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.
Soviet Berlin
Putin’s “active propaganda campaign”
prompted Britain, Denmark, Lithuania and Estonia to urge the EU to take more
robust countermeasures, resulting in the creation of the East StratCom Task
Force, which views the Lisa operation as punishment for Merkel’s success in
uniting Europe on sanctions, a diplomat close to the group said.
The Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry
have said that Russia’s only interest in the affair is in protecting the rights
of ethnic Russians abroad. A lawyer for Lisa’s family didn’t respond to
requests for comment.
By all accounts, Lisa, whose family is
from the former Soviet quarter of Berlin, disappeared Jan. 11 and
resurfaced 30 hours later. The Kremlin’s main broadcaster, Channel One,
which is viewed by many of Germany’s 4 million Russian speakers, said she told
her parents she’d been abducted and raped on her way to school by three
foreigners. But investigators later determined she’d spent the night with a
male friend because of problems at school.
By that time, the political damage to
Merkel had been done.
The ‘Spark’
“All it took was a spark for things to
spill over,” said Heinrich Groth, the chairman of a lobby group for Russian
Germans who helped organize the January protests that were attended by about
30,000 people.
Groth said that he’s already been
approached about joining forces with Pegida, an anti-immigrant movement that
has drawn thousands to its rallies since it emerged last year, and that his
views are similar to those of the anti-euro Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
The arrival of more than 1 million refugees and the attacks in Cologne and
other cities on New Year’s Eve have helped push Merkel’s approval rating to its
lowest level in more than four years.
“Europe is making a rightward
turn,” Dmitry Abzalov, who runs a consultancy in Moscow that advises the
Kremlin on opposition groups in Europe. “And Merkel has shown herself to be
weak on the migration issue.”
An official in
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union said almost all of the ruling
coalition’s Russian-German voters have defected to AfD, which also appears to
be getting funds from Russia, according to Alina Polyakova at the Dinu Patriciu
Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington. AfD, while still
relatively small, posted its best showing yet in three state elections last
month.
AfD spokesman Christian Lueth
said by e-mail that his party “adheres strictly” to Germany’s
political-financing law and takes no money from abroad.
But such assurances do little
to assuage suspicions of Putin’s intentions among the country’s leadership.
Juergen Hardt, foreign
policy spokesman in the Bundestag for the CDU/CSU alliance, said Putin may try
to cloak his activities, but it’s clear he’d rather see a fractured Europe than
a united one -- and the road to this goal runs through Berlin.
“The underlying logic is that
when you discredit Chancellor Merkel and Germany, you also weaken Europe,”
Hardt said.
“Europe is making a rightward
turn,” Dmitry Abzalov, who runs a consultancy in Moscow that advises the
Kremlin on opposition groups in Europe. “And Merkel has shown herself to be
weak on the migration issue.”
An official in
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union said almost all of the ruling
coalition’s Russian-German voters have defected to AfD, which also appears to
be getting funds from Russia, according to Alina Polyakova at the Dinu Patriciu
Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington. AfD, while still
relatively small, posted its best showing yet in three state elections last
month.
AfD spokesman Christian Lueth
said by e-mail that his party “adheres strictly” to Germany’s
political-financing law and takes no money from abroad.
But such assurances do little
to assuage suspicions of Putin’s intentions among the country’s leadership.
Juergen Hardt, foreign
policy spokesman in the Bundestag for the CDU/CSU alliance, said Putin may try
to cloak his activities, but it’s clear he’d rather see a fractured Europe than
a united one -- and the road to this goal runs through Berlin.
“The underlying logic is that
when you discredit Chancellor Merkel and Germany, you also weaken Europe,”
Hardt said.
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