DThe color dark blue and the twelve golden stars of the European flag dominated the appearance. Visually, you could almost think that you had landed on a European Union portal on the “Voice of Europe” website, or on the European enthusiasts of “Pulse of Europe”. But the content went in the opposite direction. Criminal migrants, sexual minorities, angry farmers and the influence of the “arch-globalist” George Soros: Alarming has been written about what is supposedly going wrong in Europe. And why Western support for the attacked Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia are wrong.
The site was no longer accessible late Wednesday evening. Hours earlier there was a bang in Prague. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala appeared before the press and declared that a pro-Russian network “tried to develop influence on our territory that would have serious consequences for the security of the Czech Republic and the European Union.”
The consequences of the discovery by the Czech domestic secret service BIS were that on Wednesday the operating company of “Voice of Europe” and the two people who are said to be behind it were placed on the national sanctions list: on the one hand, the Ukrainian citizen Artem Marchevskyj, who is said to have coordinated the propaganda work from Prague. He apparently did this in the service of the second sanctioned person. This is Viktor Medvedschuk, a businessman who has worked for Russia and its President Vladimir Putin for many years in Ukraine and who came to Russia in a prisoner exchange in September 2022.
Viktor Medvedchuk (left) and Vladimir Putin on July 18, 2019 in St. Petersburg
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Image: dpa
What content did the portal use to try to influence public opinion in the EU member states? What was striking in the most recently published articles (the FAZ has screenshots) was the fixation on Germany. “100 percent of serious sexual assaults and 57.4 percent of all crimes in Frankfurt are committed by foreigners,” was the headline of the last article published on Wednesday.
AfD politicians deny accepting money
It was suggested in the article itself that this could also have something to do with the airport as an entry point for migrants. But together with other recently published articles about the poor economic forecast and the publication of the Robert Koch Institute's Corona protocols, the impression is that established politicians and parties in Germany received particularly negative attention here. Conversely, AfD representatives in particular were cited as critics, according to party leader Alice Weidel in the article about crime and the health policy spokesman for the Bundestag faction, Martin Sichert, in the one about the Corona protocols.
However, the portal put the greatest effort into numerous interviews with politicians from all over Europe, which were also published on YouTube. Since the portal was revitalized by Martschewskyj in mid-2023, three AfD politicians from Germany have been interviewed: twice each of the MEP Maximilian Krah, who was elected as the party's top candidate for the European elections, and the Bavarian Bundestag member Petr Bystron – and once the MEP Joachim Kuhs. In the interview published on February 10, Krah claimed about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines that it was “important to unequivocally acknowledge that this action was directed by the Americans.” He also said that there was “rationality” behind Russia’s actions against Ukraine and that it was important to listen to “both sides”.