Christoph Hoffmann, a Bundestag member from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), stated that the Russian Federation has penetrated and exerts influence in Germany at different levels of public and political life – at the level of parties and politicians, in civil, cultural and economic spheres, and called for investigating such influence and “cleanse” oneself from it.
“We have to expose this infiltration and influence, we have to ‘cleanse’ ourselves of it. There are other examples, such as the influence of ‘Gazprom’ and their financing of foundations within projects in the Baltic Sea, there are many other examples,” the politician said.
“We were very happy when Russians were buying real estate here, some rundown hotels and so on. The money was coming to us, but we understood that it looked “strange”. Everyone understood that this money was coming from somewhere, that there was someone behind it. And what did they do? The Russians received visas in Germany in this way,” he said.
Earlier, Katarina Barley, vice-president of the European Parliament and German representative, had called for countering Russian meddling in the 2024 European Parliament elections. She said the EU needs to learn from its own ignorance about Russia’s interference in the 2019 European Parliament elections and broaden its view on both the threat itself and the methodology of such interference.
The threat of interference in the European Parliament elections had been previously stated by the head of the European Parliament defence committee, French MP Nathalie Loiseau.
