As of: February 29, 2024, 12:38 p.m
By: Kilian Beck
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Press
Split
The former FPÖ Vice Chancellor HC Strache is said to have acted on calls from Russia.
Fears that the party could be Putin's long arm are not new.
Elections will take place in the fall.
Vienna – Under former party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, the right-wing authoritarian FPÖ maintained a particularly close relationship with the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Chats that have now come to light in an investigative committee of the Austrian Parliament are said to show that Strache wanted to organize a meeting between young officials from the two countries in 2019 at Russia's request.
The Austria Press Agency (APA)
reported this
on Thursday (February 29).
The FPÖ and Putin's “United Russia” party signed a friendship agreement in 2016, which also included a non-binding exchange of information and joint consultations.
However, the FPÖ “did not want to comment” on the specific chats when asked by the news agency.
Heinz-Christian Strache at a Pegida rally in Dresden on February 24, 2023. Under his leadership, the FPÖ concluded a “friendship agreement” with Putin’s “United Russia” party.
© STRINGER / AFP
“Ibiza affair”: Strache stumbled across an alleged oligarch’s niece in 2019
Strache, protagonist of the Ibiza video, has recently been noticed almost exclusively through reports in the colorful tabloid media landscape of the Alpine republic.
In 2019, the government coalition under conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) failed due to the Ibiza corruption scandal triggered by the said video.
Back in Ibiza, Strache believed that he was negotiating with a Russian oligarch about how her money could be used to influence the country's largest tabloid newspaper.
The goal: to get him into the chancellery.
The outcry from the Austrian public was great.
The FPÖ was thrown out of government, and almost four years later, according to the
APA
poll trend for the National Council election, it is back at around 27 percent and is preparing to become the strongest force.
Your party leader is the Interior Minister from the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, Herbert Kickl.
The election will take place this fall.
“Russia” is said to have asked Strache for an exchange between officials
The chats now published come from Strache's time as Vice Chancellor.
At that time, according to APA
, he wrote
to the highest political official in his ministry that “Russia” had asked for an exchange of ideas between young officials from Austria.
“Something must be possible here through the administrative academy,” wrote Strache.
What is probably meant is the Federal Administrative Academy, which was under his control at the time.
The officer responded after a “call”: “Preparing.
We will meet."
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Whether the meeting took place and, if so, who took part remained unclear on Thursday (February 29).
Meri Disoki, parliamentary group leader of the Greens in the
said U-committee, announced
on
The FPÖ told the
APA
that there were only “usual relations” with Russia at the time.
FPÖ leader Kickl shows where he wants Austria to go: to the far right.
© ALEX HALADA/AFP
Is the FPÖ under Herbert Kickl an extension of Putin in Austria?
The suspicion that the FPÖ could also act in Putin's interests is not new.
In the run-up to a secret service affair, even the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) expressed concerns about it.
FPÖ leader Kickl was Interior Minister in Sebastian Kurz's first government from 2017 to 2019.
The BVT affair in question took place during this time.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism, the Austrian secret service at the time, carried out a house search in March 2018 based on ultimately unfounded, anonymous allegations of corruption against senior staff in the service, the news magazine
Profil
reported .
Investigators who are actually responsible for street crime were responsible for the searches.
The head of the unit was an FPÖ man who was being investigated for time-barred allegations of racist and right-wing extremist “incitement”.
FPÖ police officer confiscated secret service files on right-wing extremists – Austria was kicked out of the “Berner Club”
An investigative committee found that during the raid the investigators primarily seized files from the right-wing extremism department.
There were “discrepancies” in the “transport information” of the files.
At the time, the opposition feared that information would flow into the right-wing extremist scene, to which the FPÖ is friendly.
To this day it is not entirely clear whether and what information reached whom at the time.
What is certain, however, is that the BVT affair has caused lasting damage to the service's reputation.
As early as January 2018, Merkel feared in a conversation with her counterpart Sebastian Kurz that intelligence information from Western intelligence services could flow from Vienna to Moscow.
She justified this with the relationship between the FPÖ and “United Russia”.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
reported this at the time .
Shortly afterwards, the BVT withdrew from the so-called “Berner Club”.
The latter is an informal association of European intelligence and intelligence services.
The partners, like Merkel, feared the flow of information to Russia, wrote Der
Spiegel
.
There was probably less smiling behind the scenes.
In 2018, Angela Merkel expressed concern to Sebastian Kurz that secret information could flow from Austria to Russia.
© AFP
In the next few months, a National Council investigative committee will probably also clarify how close the relationship was between FPÖ ministers and Russia.
The FPÖ claims to the
APA
that the friendship agreement with Putin's party no longer exists, but consistently refuses to make it public.
(
KiBec
with
dpa
material)