"Rally of Shame"
The "Russian" community in Germany is the largest in Europe: about 4.5 million inhabitants of the country speak Russian, 230 thousand of them have Russian citizenship. The peak of activity of Putin's supporters here fell on the middle of spring. Their most notable actions were car rallies in support of Russia and against Russophobia. The largest one was held on April 3 in Berlin and caused public outrage – just the day before, the world became aware of the tragedy in Bucha. A column of several hundred cars – according to various estimates, there were from 400 to 700 – moved out of the suburbs of Berlin and drove through the whole city, stopping in Treptow Park, where the Soviet war memorial is located. Participants in the "motor run of shame", as the German media called the action, waved the flags of Russia and the USSR, turned on songs in Russian at full volume and shouted insults at the Ukrainian refugees.
Participants of the “motor run of shame” waved the flags of Russia and the USSR and insulted Ukrainian refugees
The formal organizers of the event were the owner of the city auto repair shop, a citizen of Russia and Germany Christian (real name – Igor) Fraer and German Rene Hermann . It is known about Fraer that he came to Germany 20 years ago from Orsk, and Hermann allegedly learned Russian thanks to frequent business trips to Russia and the CIS countries. Back in early March, Hermann appeared in a story on Channel One: a video from TikTok was shown on the air, where he, addressing “dear Mr. Putin”, expresses support for the Russian president and regrets the position of European countries.
The Berlin motor rally was stubbornly presented as a grassroots initiative, but it was most likely funded by the Russian embassy, Alexei Kozlov, human rights coordinator for the Free Russia-Berlin organization (Freies Russland Berlin), told The Insider:
“We immediately assumed that there was some kind of external funding, although the organizers denied this, claiming that it was just their “good will”. The event turned out to be quite expensive: there were a lot of special flags for the hoods on the cars, and they had to be ordered separately. In addition, there were many participants from other cities – it is clear that they were brought to Berlin, placed somewhere, which also requires coordination and funding.
The rally organizers' connection with the Russian diplomatic mission became apparent later in April, when Fraer and Hermann were spotted attending an embassy event at the Seelow Heights memorial.
In an interview after the action, Igor-Christian Fraer complained about the threats against him and insisted that the rally was held not in support of the war, but in protest against discrimination against the Russian-speaking population of Germany. However, the content that the activist publishes on social networks eloquently speaks of his attitude to the events in Ukraine: for example, as Meduza wrote , in a closed Telegram channel, Fraer calls on his supporters to attack “ukropov” and “Khokhlyatsky streams” on social networks.
Pro-Russian car rallies took place in April in other German cities, but their initiators failed to achieve the desired effect. In Hannover, Ukrainians and opponents of the war, who came out to counter-demonstrate, blocked the road to a convoy with Russian flags and threw horse manure on the cars. In Frankfurt am Main, the authorities did not give permission for the rally at all, and the organizers had to be content with the usual demonstration.
In Hannover, Ukrainians and opponents of the war threw horse manure into the cars of pro-Russian activists
But the main thing that cooled the ardor of Russia's supporters was the harsh reaction of the German authorities. Back in late March, several regions of the country criminalized the public display of the Z symbol. The use of the Latin letter as a sign of approval of the aggressive war against Ukraine is now punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to three years. So, a 62-year-old resident of Hamburg was sentenced to a fine of € 4 thousand, who pasted a piece of paper with the letter Z on the rear window of a car. In Berlin, law enforcement agencies went even further and forbade the organizers of the Immortal Regiment procession to use not only the letters Z and V, but also other Russian militaristic symbols – St. George ribbons, any flags and banners, all types and elements of military uniforms, military marches as musical escorts.
The policy of intolerance towards public approval of Russia's actions in Ukraine is bearing fruit. In October, the Lower Bavaria police searched the apartment of notorious blogger Yulia Prokhorova (Chernysheva). In social networks, she regularly posted videos in which she glorified Russia and rejoiced at the shelling of Ukrainian cities. Prokhorova also arranged provocations at rallies in support of Ukraine – she came there with the Russian tricolor, danced to Kalinka and insulted Ukrainian refugees. She is now under investigation on suspicion of "approving criminal acts." After a search, during which the police seized smartphones and a laptop, the blogger stopped publishing new materials. As The Insider already wrote , Yulia Prokhorova was born in the village of Bezenchuk, Samara Region. After moving to Moscow, she worked as a cashier in the Pyaterochka store and provided escort services.
"Benefactors" of Donbass
In recent months, representatives of the Russian diaspora have been left to take to the streets with anti-government slogans, protesting at the same time against sanctions against Russia, rising prices and coronavirus restrictions. Such demonstrations gather a very diverse audience: pro-Putin activists find themselves in the same company with radical groups from the far left to the far right, corona skeptics, supporters of conspiracy theories and other marginals. However, it is difficult to call these performances numerous – in different cities from several hundred to several thousand people participate in them, and this in Germany, where dozens of various actions are held daily, will not surprise anyone, notes Alexei Kozlov.
Another protest action against the policy of Germany and NATO took place on December 4 in Cologne. The demonstrators marched through the central streets of the city with posters calling for the lifting of sanctions against Moscow, the launch of Nord Stream 2 and the cessation of arms supplies to Ukraine. Under the same slogans, supporters of peace with Russia gathered in early September at the Cologne Cathedral. Then Russian flags were visible in the crowd, and in parallel with the rally, a fundraiser was held for the “defenders of Donbass”.
These actions, like other pro-Russian demonstrations in Cologne after February 24, were organized by representatives of the local Russian-speaking community, activists of the military-patriotic society "Pamyat" spouses Elena Kolbasnikova and Maxim Shlyund . Justifying the war did not get away with them: Kolbasnikova, who worked in the field of medical care at home, was fired back in the spring, many are demanding that she be deported or prosecuted. In October, the Tsargrad TV channel showed a report about how a married couple brought humanitarian aid to the Donbass for civilians and fighters of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR. The "Russian Germans" did not come to eastern Ukraine on their own, but as part of a PR campaign led by Putin's "All-Russian People's Front." A video showing Kolbasnikova and like-minded people collecting humanitarian aid for Donbas residents was also posted on the Facebook page of Rossotrudnichestvo, the federal agency responsible for relations with Russian compatriots abroad.
In photographs from this trip, Kolbasnikova hugs another activist from Germany – Liana Kilints , Chairman of the Bridge of Peace – Aid to War Victims Foundation, which also delivers humanitarian aid to the Donbass (and also accompanied by representatives of the Popular Front).
An interesting fact: Kilints herself is from the family of an employee of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR. In the past, a member of the German Party of the Left (Die Linke), now she takes part in the events of the German Communist Party (a marginal party that in recent years has received no more than 0.1% of the vote in elections), and the Russian Union of Veterans does represent it a member of the "Union of Red Soldiers" ("Rot Front") – the military wing of the Communist Party of Germany, which existed in 1924-1933. Her activities are not limited to the transportation of humanitarian goods: for example, in February 2019, together with the authorities of the so-called DPR, she organized a concert for the children of Donbass in the Moscow House of Nationalities. And on May 9 of this year, together with the Russian ambassador, Kilints laid a wreath in front of the memorial in Treptow Park. After that, she unfurled the “DPR” flag, for which she was immediately detained by the police.
Recently, Kilints has been in trouble with the law: in September, it became known that the Brandenburg police were investigating her foundation on suspicion of incitement to hatred and genocide denial. The reason was a photograph on the official website of the Bridge of Peace, which depicts men and women with the flag of Novorossiya and the forbidden symbol Z. The organization is registered as a non-profit and is exempt from taxes to the German budget, but now risks losing this status.
Alliance with the far right
In the Tsargrad story mentioned above, Elena Kolbasnikova, with tears in her eyes, speaks of Russia's inevitable victory over the "Ukrainian fascists." At the same time, the activist herself does not hesitate to cooperate with the right-wing radical politician well-known in Cologne Markus Beisicht . Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and a big fan of Putin helps Kolbasnikova to organize anti-NATO rallies and is actively pro-Kremlin agitation on the Internet. Baizicht gave a speech in support of Russia at the rally on May 8, attended a festive event on the occasion of the Day of Russia, and before that, together with Kolbasnikova , he was invited to the Consul General of the Russian Federation in Bonn, Alexei Dronov. Moreover, in response to an inquiry from a local newspaper, he claimed that Dronov invited him personally. This fact suggests that the comrades-in-arms act at least with the approval of the Russian embassy in Germany. They plan to hold their next action at the end of February 2023 in front of the US air base in Ramstein.
From the report on that visit, it follows that Kolbasnikova visited the Russian Consulate General as a representative of Beisicht's ultra-right organization Aufbruch Leverkusen. It is also known that in August of this year, the couple Kolbasnikova and Schlund attended a festival organized by the neo-fascist magazine Compact for representatives of ultra-right movements. The main themes of the event were "freedom of Germany from the dictatorship of the US and NATO" and "peace with Russia". It is noteworthy that one of the festival participants, member of the Bundestag from the Alternative for Germany party Robert Farle, delivered a speech at a pro-Russian rally in Cologne in December.
The connections of the Russian diaspora with German nationalists have long been known. In 2016, the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDPG) and the movement "Patriot Europeans Against the Islamization of the Old World" (PEGIDA, Pegida) helped the Russian-speaking community organize rallies in defense of the Russian girl Liza , allegedly kidnapped and raped by migrants in Berlin (after an investigation, the police established that the story was fabricated). The applicant for these actions turned out to be the marginal organization "International Convention of Russian Germans" headed by a native of Kazakhstan, an ethnic German Heinrich Grout . Demonstrations demanding a revision of the migration policy and the resignation of Angela Merkel took place in the winter of 2016 in other cities of the country. Calls to take to the streets were massively sent through instant messengers and social networks, including Odnoklassniki.
Protest moods in the diaspora were then actively fueled by Russian television. The rhetoric of Channel One was so aggressive that the Berlin prosecutor's office even received a request to check one of the stories for inciting ethnic hatred. Accusations of the German authorities of inaction and concealment of the truth about the "crime" were heard from both Maria Zakharova and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov himself.
The scale of the Russian disinformation campaign about the "Lisa case" and the unprecedented political activity of the usually inert "Russian Germans" alerted the German public. Suspicions were also raised by the main character of the protests, Heinrich Grout. In the 90s, living in Russia, he was known as a fighter for the rehabilitation and restoration of the statehood of the Soviet Germans – and, as follows from his profile in Spiegel, he worked closely with the Russian special services. It was also reported that Grout, at the height of the story with Lisa, flew to Moscow "in connection with the organization of a protest event." All this indicated that the "Russian rebellion" was orchestrated by the Kremlin, which is interested in destabilizing the domestic political situation in European countries.
“Moscow has a rich history of using social movements for its own purposes, especially those that oppose European and transatlantic integration. But if in Soviet times the Kremlin turned to left-wing socialists for this, today it focuses on conservative, right-wing and extremist movements,” explains German political scientist Felix Riefer. Russian officials and denazifiers close to the Kremlin, such as Konstantin Malofeev and Alexander Dugin, have indeed been in contact with far-right and other radical forces in Europe for many years. In 2015, the former leader of the NPD, Udo Voigt, at the invitation of the Rodina party , spoke in St. Petersburg at the International Russian Conservative Forum – in fact, a gathering of Russian and European neo-Nazis. An admirer of Hitler, in his speech, Voigt praised Vladimir Putin's "skillful and subtle" political course. And at the end of 2020, Sergey Lavrov received in Moscow a delegation from the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party, which for many years maintained close relations with Moscow and allegedly received secret funding from it. With the outbreak of war, the leaders of the AfD, however, preferred to distance themselves from their longtime partner, recognizing that "there is no justification for Russia's attack on Ukraine."
The material was prepared jointly with Iva Tsoi