Inside Germany

In a square beneath the twin spires of Cologne's gothic cathedral, around 2,000 protesters gathered in September to urge Germany's government to break with the Western coalition backing Ukraine and make peace with Russia. "We must stop being vassals of the Americans," right-wing German politician Markus Beisicht said from a makeshift stage on the back of a truck. The crowd clapped and waved Russian and German flags. A lean man in camouflage trousers stood at the side of the stage, obscured from the crowd by a tarpaulin. A few meters away, a burly man in dark sunglasses stood guard. The rally's organizers did not welcome questions. Most declined to speak when approached by a Reuters reporter. One protester tried to persuade a police officer to arrest the reporter as a Ukrainian spy. The rally was just one of many occasions - online and on the streets - where people have clamored that Berlin should reconsider its support for Ukraine. That message taps into deep connections between Germany and Russia, with several million Russian speakers living in Germany, a legacy of Soviet ties to Communist east Germany, and decades of German dependency on Russian gas. The stakes are high: if Germany, the European Union's biggest economy, turns its back on Kyiv, European unity over the war will fracture. Through interviews and a review of social media posts and other publicly available information, Reuters has established the identities of key figures involved in pushing a pro-Moscow stance inside Germany since the war began, including the two men hovering near the stage in Cologne. The lean man is a Russian former air force officer. Originally called Rostislav Teslyuk, he changed his name to Max Schlund after settling in Germany a decade ago. In recent months he traveled to Russian-controlled east Ukraine. More recently a Russian government agency paid for his plane ticket to Moscow for a conference where President Vladimir Putin was the keynote speaker. The agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, is under EU sanctions for running a network of "agents of influence" spreading Kremlin narratives. Its head has branded the sanctions, imposed in July, as "insane." Schlund's burly neighbor near the stage, a man called Andrei Kharkovsky, pledges allegiance to a Cossack society that is supporting Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine. Schlund and Kharkovsky didn't answer detailed questions for this article. In a WhatsApp exchange Schlund wrote: "Eff off!" and "Glory to Russia!" Reuters found that some of the loudest agitators for a change in German policy have two faces. Some use aliases and have undisclosed ties to Russia and Russian entities under international sanctions or to far-right organizations. … Another is a Berlin construction company executive who used to be an officer in Russia's military intelligence. He is acquainted with one of three Russian men recently convicted by a Dutch court for helping supply the missile that downed a Malaysian passenger plane over Ukraine in 2014…. The majority of Germans still support Ukraine, but after a steep rise in energy costs, polls show fewer are keen on expanding military support. … Ties between Germany and Russia stretch back centuries. Empress Catherine the Great invited her German compatriots to emigrate to Russia in the 18th century. Between 1992 and 2002, around 1.5 million of these settlers' descendants moved back to Germany, taking advantage of laws that allowed people of German ancestry to claim citizenship.… Eremenko has long been active in the Russian German community. He runs a construction business in Berlin. Clients listed on its website include the Russian Orthodox Church in Berlin. The Church said it had no record of its contractors. The grandson of a Soviet war hero who was a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party until 1981, Eremenko is on the board of an organization called "Desant," which is made up of former Russian servicemen. He has appeared at events alongside Russian diplomats to commemorate the Soviet war dead buried in Germany and has been pictured with German politicians such as Manuela Schwesig, a member of the Social Democrats and state premier of the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In 2020, Eremenko was among a small group of people given citations for service to Russia by the country's ambassador to Germany. Schwesig did not respond to a request for comment. His past is less public. In a photograph dated 2016 Eremenko poses next to Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer recently convicted in absentia by a Dutch court of involvement in the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 over Ukraine. The photo appears on a VKontakte account run by Girkin's organization. Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, has denied any role in the shooting down of the plane. Contacted by Reuters for this story, Girkin said: "I don't give interviews to enemy media." … Eremenko confirmed to Reuters that he worked for Russian military intelligence, the GRU. He said he served inside Russia but declined to give details. "I served, and that's it," he said. "I'm now in Germany in, let's say, a civilian status," promoting Russian culture and memorializing World War Two dead in conjunction with Russian officials. Eremenko said he got to know Girkin when delivering humanitarian supplies to people in the Donbas region in 2014 and 2015. Declining to speak in detail, he said he and other Russian activists are under heightened scrutiny from German authorities. "Too much information will do no favors for the pro-Russian side," he said. "The more names there are, the more information about our activities here, it will be very unhelpful for our reputation here, especially with the German authorities." He said he had made no political statements backing either side in the war in Ukraine. ,,, Germany's Interior Ministry, which oversees the police and the federal agency monitoring extremism, said it does not comment on the activities of specific individuals or groups https://www.newsmax.com/globaltalk/putin-operatives-germany/2023/01/03/id/1102809/