The Strudel of Influence Layer 2: The Connectors (Economic Ties and Pro-Russian Organizations)
Investigators/Authors: Agata Pyka, Lisa Duschek
Edited by: Emma Urbanova
This investigation was realised with the support of Journalism Fund Europe.
In the previous part of our investigation, we have described the soft power structures of the Kremlin such as the Russian House, KSORS, Friends of Crimea, and the Sochi Dialogue Forum. We have established that these institutions directly penetrate Austrian culture, politics, and economy, creating grounds for a more covert network of influence. We present to you the second layer of the strudel: the connectors - economic ties and pro-Russian organizations.
Russia-Friendly Business Structures
On the European scene, Austria has been known for maintaining close relations with Russia - especially the economic ones - even during the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As the first Western country to import Soviet gas, the Austrian energy sector in particular has been heavily intertwined with Russia. As of 2022, Russia was Austria’s second biggest source of FDI, with a total stranglehold on Austria’s natural gas usage. In December 2023, official data showed that a staggering 98% of Austria’s natural gas imports came from Russia - an increase from 80% prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But Russia holds a tight grip not only over the Austrian energy sector. As of 2022, 650 Austrian companies had subsidiaries in Russia, with a total investment sum of €4,6 billion. Among the companies with close links to Russia is one of Austria’s largest players, the Raiffeisenbank. Despite the promise to abandon their Russia business after facing intense public criticism, Raiffeisenbank advertised 270 new jobs in Russia in April 2024. When confronted with the allegations, the bank claimed that it takes time to downsize their operations in Russia.
These are just a few examples of the Russian-Austrian interconnectedness, exemplified on a governmental level by Austria’s Economic Chamber (WKO) and its foreign trade promotion office, Advantage Austria.
In 2015, after the Russian annexation of Crimea and during the ongoing sanctions, Advantage Austria Russia published a newsletter stating that over 300 Austrian companies attended their event whose purpose was to inform about possible investment and business opportunities in Russia. In the newsletter, the WKO praised the good relations between Austria and Russia, emphasizing the multitude of business opportunities in the latter country.
In September that same year, the WKO organized an event titled “Successful in Russia despite sanctions”. The link to the event and the event page itself have since been deleted but we retrieved them using webarchive. The event description reads: “[...] the current tense political situation does not detract from the long-term potential of the Russian market. Russia will remain a very important market due to its size” and “a successful export to Russia or investment must be well prepared. The speakers at this forum will provide information on this as well as on the current status of sanctions, current Russian efforts to substitute imports and the new amendment to the law regarding the storage of personal data” (our translation).
In the same newsletter, Advantage Austria was using a quote from Sputnik, the pro-Russian propaganda channel, stating that “despite the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on them, Russia will always get on its feet again”.
After Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022, the WKO once again demonstrated its sympathies for Moscow when it sent out an invitation to its member enterprises for a cross-country skiing trip in Russia. After quite some public backlash and outrage, the trip was canceled, but the bitter taste remained - especially as the organisation continued with its pro-Russian instructions.
In March 2023, Advantage Austria published yet another guide for conducting business with and in Russia, with a suggestive title “Russia Let’s Get Started”, where they recommended “using unorthodox methods” for conducting business operations with the country due to the difficult circumstances, as reported by Austrian newspaper Der Standard. But as with previous publications, after gaining public attention and leading to public outrage, the site was permanently deleted. Research using the Wayback Machine revealed that the site was deleted on the very same day when Der Standard published an article about it. The site was online from November 2020 until March 9th 2023 (the exact day said article was published).
Yet, despite the removal of the above-described content from the organization’s website, Karlheinz Kopf, Secretary-General of the WKO, said in a 2022 interview that Austria will keep the communication channels to Russia open despite international sanctions and considers itself a “builder of bridges”. The country has since stayed true to this statement,, with the help of a network of well-connected pro-Russian individuals.
The unmistakably pro-Russian tendencies of Austrian business figures are especially clear in the recent case of Josef Kaltenegger, an Austrian business owner whose company, like Mayer’s, is listed in the Advantage Austria registry. The man has recently made a trip to Russia where he participated in the World Festival of Youth,# alongside figures such as the Russian president Vladimir Putin or the foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. The event was organized by the Kremlin to ensure a broad turnout for the March 2024 presidential elections - the same elections where Kaltenegger later served as an observer.
The businessman’s presence at the festival has not gone unnoticed by the Russian media. When interviewed by Russia Today (RT),Moscow’s propaganda channel banned in Europe,Kaltenegger said that the event “felt like home” to him. “The problem with [being a] European entrepreneur is, if you work with some countries out of Europe and the United States say ‘we don’t like it’, you have trouble,” he told RT, referring to the sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and the EU amid the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Kaltenegger published his thoughts and pictures from the trip extensively on his Facebook account. “I simply love this giant Russia, its landscape and above all its people,” he wrote. “I am experiencing a Russia unlike what has been reported or described in the EU or Austrian media for years,” he argued.
Reflecting on the presidential election where he acted as an observer, the entrepreneur assessed them as “not much different” than those in Austria, highlighting “normal control” and “friendly, relaxed” atmosphere.
After coming back to Austria, Kaltenegger concluded: “The West doesn’t understand the Russian soul by an inch… Or to put it differently: the train is moving into the future without Europe! We don’t need the West…”
Pro-Russian Assets
The ties between Austrian political groups and Russia were strengthened in 2017 when various members of the FPÖ such as Detlef Wimmer, Hans-Jörg Jenewein, Axel Kassegger and Barbara Rosenkranz attended the Yalta International Economic Forum - an annual business event held in Crimea. The conference was established by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Crimea in 2015 to “to administer to full-fledged integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation”.
During the forum, the FPÖ leadership recognised the new status of Crimea against the official position of other countries in the European Union. Since then, Wimmer and Kassegger have continued to spread the Russian narrative.
Detlef Wimmer, the vice-mayor of Linz, has been investigated for ties to far-right elements, banned from Ukraine, and denounced by the Ukrainian ambassador to Austria. His participation in politics was curtailed after the fallout of the Ibiza scandal took down several Russian members of the FPÖ.
However, not all compromised figures were equally affected: Axel Kassegger is still present in Austrian politics as a member of the National Council and the FPÖ spokesperson on foreign policy. He has advocated for the removal of sanctions on Russia and for the EU to stop sending support to Ukraine.
Russia’s ability to attract useful Austrian individuals has resulted in further business ties in the person of Wolfgang Mayer, an executive at food producer Backaldrin, included in Advantage Austria’s registry of companies. Mayer, a self-proclaimed “international networker, innovator and communications expert” was in 2019 awarded the title of honorary consul of the Russian Federation in Linz, with Ambassador Lyubinsky bestowing the honours.
The honorary consul does not hide his Russian connections: the Sochi Dialogue website, among other pro-Russian and Russo-Austrian websites, is to this day featured on his official consulary page. Similarly, back in 2020, Mayer was invited to give a lecture at the MGIMO School of Business and International Proficiency organized with the support of the Russian-Austrian public forum Sochi Dialogue (source).
There are more pro-Russian entities in Austria connected to Layer 1, such as Patrick Poppel - a board member of Friends of Crimea and former Secretary-General of the Austria-based pro-Kremlin Suvorov Institute - who acted as an “election observer” in 2018 for the Russian-backed elections in occupied Crimea and occupied Donetsk.
Moreover, Poppel acts as Secretary-General of the Austrian-Abkhazian Society and is the formal representative of South Ossetia in Austria. Coincidentally, both of these territories are not recognised internationally and remain under Russia’s protection and influence.
His pro-Russian stance is even clearer when one takes a deeper look into the Suvorov Institute. After the full-scale Russian invasion on Ukraine in February 2022, the organization wrote in German on their Facebook account: “Today Russia's President Putin has recognized the Donbass as independent within its old borders - for the warmongers of NATO and the West this means an end to their evil game! Long live the Donbass! Long live the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics! Long live Russia! Long live Eurasia! Long live the multipolar world!” (our translation - see the original below).
Poppel’s Kremlin sympathies continued as the war developed. In 2023, he moderated the international round table “Security Policy Challenges for Europe in 2023” that took place on 30 March in Vienna. The participants from Germany, Italy, France, Serbia, Poland, Syria, and Austria all agreed that Austrian neutrality stands in opposition to “Ukrainian, NATO and American propaganda”.
Alongside Poppel, among the participants were Andreas Molzer, former FPÖ Member of the European Parliament, and Karin Kneissl, former Minister for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria who danced with Putin at her own wedding, moved to Russia, and in 2023 called the Russian president “the most intelligent gentleman”.
Delving deeper, the current Secretary-General of the Suvorov Institute, Alexander Markovics, is, like Poppel, associated with the Russian propagandist Alexander Dugin and is involved with the right-wing Identitarian movement. Markovics has also been involved with the FPÖ on a local level. We explain how pro-Russian assets affect the FPÖ in more detail in “Layer 3:...”.
Reaching Further
Kaltenegger’s views on the Russian elections have echoed in Austrian media as well, reaching a broad audience. His opinion piece was shared by the Kleine Zeitung, the largest regional newspaper in Austria with around 800,000 readers.
“I've just come back from Russia and one thing is a fact: the Russians love Putin,” his op-ed starts. “People in politics and the media try to bend the supposed truth to suit themselves. But this will always lead to shipwreck”.
Similar rhetoric is being spread by other Austrian media outlets. One such example is info-DIREKT - an online and print “magazine for patriots” in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and South Tyrol.
Owned partially by Ulrich Püschel (30% of shares) - former head of department of the road administration,office manager of the infrastructure officer Markus Hein (FPÖ), and current director of the Health and Sport division of the Austrian city of Linz - the magazine spreads subtle pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric.
On 5 March 2024, the outlet published an article titled “Ukraine War: Petition against sending our soldiers launched,” alleging that “following the demand for arms deliveries to Ukraine, European soldiers are now also to participate in the war”. The article defended Austria’s neutrality, citing FPÖ’s head Herbert Kickl and the party’s spokeswoman Petra Steger.
Another publication from 18 June 2023 shares the views of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of the largest Ukrainian opposition party, claiming that the war between Russia and Ukraine “could have ended long ago” but that was prevented by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
At the same time, Info-DIREKT serves as an advertising platform for the Freedom Party of Austria. The FPÖ regularly place their banners on the magazine’s website, with many of the party’s politicians - such as Martin Graf, Johann Gudenus, Herbert Kickl, Maximilian Krauss, Philipp Schrangl, Elmar Podgorschek, Harald Vilimsky - co-authoring articles, writing their own commentaries, and giving interviews.
However, this connection constitutes merely the tip of the iceberg of FPÖ’s pro-Russian sympathies. Read the next part of our investigation “Layer 3:...” to delve into the complexity of the links between Austria’s main party and the Kremlin.
Agata Pyka
Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland and a freelance investigative journalist. She specializes in Polish and European politics as well as Russian disinformation.
Lisa Duschek
Lisa has many years of experience working at the intersections of journalism, humanitarian and crisis response and ICT. She is passionate about combining her different skills and backgrounds to investigate and uncover relevant stories regarding corruption, international crime and digital and human rights issues.
