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.
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 parties as “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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