Eugen Schmidt, a computer programmer from Cologne in western Germany, credits the television stations controlled by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin for exposing what he says local media won’t — the dangers of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy for Muslim immigrants. A native of the Soviet Union, he was a loyal supporter of Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the years since he moved with his family to Germany in 1999. But four years ago, he defected to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, as the incoming wave of refugees from violence in the Arab world began to swell. Events in January of last year turned the 41-year-old from a quiet AfD supporter to grassroots activist and widely read blogger. First, hundreds of women were sexually assaulted at New Year celebrations here by men mainly from North Africa. And then, for five days, he says German media “kept absolutely quiet” about an attack that shocked the nation when its true scale became public. “That was the last straw for me,” Schmidt said over coffee in a cafe near Cologne’s central square, one of several areas of Germany where the attacks happened. “It only came out through Russian media and Facebook.”
Schmidt’s version of events fits the anti-establishment narrative, fueled by an initial police report that described a relatively peaceful night. While local media covered the news within hours, it took national outlets several days to pick up the story of the unprecedented attacks.
Merkel, Putin’s most powerful critic in Europe, is fighting to extend her 12 years as chancellor in September. Her campaign aides are convinced the Kremlin is working to thwart her. Intelligence officials warn of Russian cyber attacks aimed at manipulating the vote.
But if Putin has a Trojan Horse in German politics, it’s an estimated 2.5 million voters who like Schmidt speak Russian and make up the country’s largest minority voting bloc. Most so-called Russian Germans have ancestors who moved to the Russian Empire to farm and began to return en masse after the Cold War. Up to three-fifths of these people consider Russian TV more trustworthy than domestic broadcasts and 40 percent say it’s their main source of news, a survey by the Bonn-based Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom shows.
Full Article: Putin Has a Really Big Trojan Horse in Germany – Bloomberg.