Former Austrian FM faces loss of life threats over Russia ties — RT World Information
Retired diplomat Karin Kneissl reportedly left Austria after receiving loss of life threats
Karin Kneissl has needed to depart Austria resulting from fears for her life, she advised the Washington Submit on Tuesday. The previous overseas minister stated she continued receiving loss of life threats even after resigning from the board of the Russian vitality firm Rosneft, amid the battle in Ukraine.
The revelation got here as a part of a Submit story which claimed that Russian affect “got here to permeate” the Alpine nation. Kneissl advised the outlet’s reporters through WhatsApp she was “not giving interviews” any extra and that she had emigrated from Austria due to loss of life threats.
After serving as Austria’s overseas minister between 2017 and 2019, Kneissl was nominated for the place at Rosneft in March 2021, changing into the primary girl on the corporate’s board. She was additionally a contributor at RT, writing opinion items on Russia’s relations with the West, in addition to different points.
After the EU joined the US in imposing sanctions towards Moscow over the battle in Ukraine, nevertheless, Kneissl was pressured to resign from the Rosneft board. The day earlier than she did so, the European Parliament handed a decision calling for private sanctions towards European politicians nonetheless holding ties to Russian companies, with Kneissl and Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder talked about by title. Schroeder, who was additionally on the Rosneft board, then resigned as effectively.
The Submit, owned by Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos, primarily centered on Kneissl’s 2018 marriage ceremony, which made worldwide headlines after Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the occasion and danced along with her in entrance of the cameras. The outlet additionally accused “the far-right Freedom Social gathering” of Austria (FPO) of getting “very hot ties to the Kremlin,” partially as a result of it despatched a number of members on an official journey to Crimea in 2017, three years after its reunification with Russia.
The FPO has at all times denied any ties to the federal government in Moscow. The fitting-wing populists turned nationwide conservatives rose to political prominence beneath Joerg Haider, who died in a 2008 automobile crash. Led by Hans-Christian Strache, the FPO turned the junior accomplice within the ruling coalition in 2017, however was turfed out in Might 2019 after the “Ibiza affair.”
The most important scandal in Austria’s trendy political historical past got here on the top of the “Russiagate” hysteria within the US and featured a secretly recorded video suggesting Strache and one other FPO official Johann Gudenus had plotted corrupt offers with the daughter of a “Russian oligarch” on the Spanish resort. It made no distinction that the Kremlin had nothing to do with any of it: the girl turned out to be an impostor, the whole set-up was orchestrated by a Viennese lawyer, and each Strache and Gudenus denied any wrongdoing.