After WW2 Stalin wanted to get Germany. So he proposed to allow a united Germany, if it would be neutral. Obviously the plan was to have a neutral Germany under Stalins rule, but that goes without saying. However he needed West Germany to agree to this. So he allowed Austria, which was in a similar situation, to unite as a real democracy, as long as they stay neutral. Naturally he also made sure there are a lot of Soviet spies in Austria and Austria got some nice deals with the Soviets.
Nowadays Austria still profits of these connections to Russia and the political leadership class was never fully replaced as with the Communist countries further east. So the FBS had an easy time to just keep up influence. Then Austria moved to the right. Now they also have a facist party, which was in government for years and a bunch of close Russia connections going all the way to Ibiza.
She was from the far right governmental party that is allied with Putins party - so no surprise at all. Most far right parties in Europe love Putin - Fascist love Fascits.
Just sad how much support they have here....
In 2018, Karin Kneissl, then foreign minister of neutral Austria, made headlines when she invited Putin to her wedding.
It drew widespread criticism, coming just months after some EU countries – excluding Austria – expelled scores of Russian diplomats in response to the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.
A highly controversial figure in her own country, Kneissl moved to France in September 2020 and became a guest columnist for Russia Today, which is widely viewed as a propaganda arm of the Kremlin.
But Lebanon was only a temporary solution, she said, and she travelled to Russia every six weeks for work, where she is now setting up a thinktank.
In June, Kneissl unveiled the Gorki centre – a thinktank attached to St Petersburg university to operate under her leadership.
The thinktank was set up to “help define the policies for the Russian Federation” with a focus on the Near and Middle East.
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