Austria: Are Austria’s politicians still enthusiastic about Putin?
All parties have served Putin’s regime in recent years. And not everywhere has there been a rethink since the outbreak of war.
It’s something of a little love story: for years, the relationship between Austria and Russia was characterized by discreet closeness and intensive exchange. In Russia, the Alpine republic is valued for the fact that Vienna has always held back on the international stage when tensions between the Kremlin and the West are the order of the day. In Austria, people value one thing above all: jobs in Russia – and the business of local companies and banks on site.
“Incredibly nice, a person like you and me. Under him he speaks perfect German.” So exactly the Austrian ski legend Karl Schranz, three-time world champion, his friend Putin. Schranz went skiing with him in St. Anton, followed by visits to Moscow (“he sent me his private jet to Innsbruck”). Before the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, in 2014 – the year of the escalation in eastern Ukraine and the Russian annexation of Crimea – Schranz advised his ski mates on what they had to take into account at “his” games.
Austria’s and France’s right-wing politicians have been speaking out against Putin for years
As in France – keyword Marine Le Pen – it is also in Austria, above all, the extreme right that has maintained close contacts with Putin’s regime in Moscow and the party “United Russia” for years. It starts with the former party leadership – and ends with the right-wing populists.
“We want someone like Putin!” emblazoned on the cover of the first issue of the right-wing extremist magazine Info directT. It appeared in 2015, already after Putin’s aggression in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. In the following years, the medium repeatedly received funds from public media funding contributions from the offices of FPÖ politicians.
Unforgotten is the “selfie” photo that ex-FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache and party friends took in December 2016 on Red Square in Moscow. “Working talks” with the Russian leadership were to be held in Moscow, the FPÖ men said at the time, after all “political and economic contacts for Austria were needed instead of negative and strange sanctions”. Result of the visit: a “Cooperation Agreement”.
Also read about this
This relationship reached a climax after the FPÖ joined ex-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s government in 2017 as a junior partner. In June 2018, Putin came to Vienna for a state visit, and Strache and Kurz proudly posed next to the Russian President for press photographers.
Putin danced with ex-FPÖ politician Karin Kneißl at her wedding
And today the photo that shows the ex-FPÖ politician Karin Kneißl “curtsy” in front of the Moscow ruler is almost iconic: In the summer of 2018, a few months after the state meeting in Vienna, Putin surprised the then foreign minister with a visit to her wedding celebration in the southern Styria. The dictator wanted to do her a “favour”, according to some of the guests at the time. Kneißl’s curtsy triggered an international scandal and consolidated the image of Austria as the country of “Putin understanders”.
In fact, there are numerous active and former politicians on Putin’s payroll by far not only in the FPÖ. There is the former SPÖ Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, who in 2020 sat on the supervisory board of the “Dialog of Civilizations Research Institute” (DOC) – an advisory group close to the Kremlin, founded by the oligarch Vladimir Yakunin. He called Gusenbauer an “old friend”. During the Russian war, Lange also supported Gusenbauer’s party colleague and ex-Chancellor Christian Kern.
Only after the start of the Russian invasion did Kern, formerly head of the Austrian Federal Railways, return to his supervisory board mandate in the Russian state railways RZD. Others, like ex-ÖVP chancellor Wolfgang Bowl, will refuse to give up their Russian paycheck. Bowl sits on the supervisory board of the oil company Lukoil, which is not affected by sanctions and is also listed on the London Stock Exchange, Bowl’s spokeswoman tries to defend.
Another high-ranking ÖVP politician even defended Putin in front of TV cameras when the invasion of Ukraine was imminent. “He is a brilliant political chess player,” admired Christoph Leitl, until 2018 head of the ÖVP-affiliated Chamber of Commerce, the Russian dictator. And even “additional sanctions” would “not solve the conflict”. Russia’s “need for security” must be “satisfied”.
All information about the escalation can be found at any time in our live blog on the war in Ukraine.