https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/krem ... -9gj27s8g5
The Kremlin may be co-ordinating demonstrations across Europe to show support for the war in Ukraine, Russia experts have told The Times.
Vehicles emblazoned with the pro-war Z symbol and marches attended by hundreds of flag-waving nationalists paraded through Dublin, Hanover, Frankfurt and Limassol last weekend, after similar events in Athens and Berlin.
The timing and format of the demonstrations, despite them being hundreds of miles apart, prompted experts in Russian affairs to suggest they might have been orchestrated by the state.
They said members of the diaspora may have been directed by Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian federal government agency with offices all over Europe, that promotes soft power and is effectively run by the foreign affairs ministry in Moscow. In all the protests, participants waved variants of the Russian flag alongside that of the host nation, drove in convoy through cities and parroted Kremlin propaganda.
About 900 protesters in a 400-strong motorcade drove through Berlin on April 3, with vehicles draped in pro-Russian imagery. One woman was arrested for displaying the letter Z, a crime in some parts of Germany.
On the same day and about 1,120 miles away demonstrators decorated their cars with the same symbol and hundreds of drivers in Athens honked their horns in support of Russia. Both events provoked outrage from local residents and the Ukrainian embassies, but more demonstrations followed.
Last Sunday convoys of cars and military-style trucks drove through the streets of Dublin, some bearing the Z and all donning flags.
The Times analysed the models and number plates of the vehicles and discovered that they belong to a group of Russian expatriates who take part in annual parades in the Irish capital.
Some of their cars have also featured in promotional material published on social media by the Russian Embassy in Ireland in 2019, when it organised an official event to commemorate the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
People taking part in last week’s protest denied the Z was a Russian symbol and said Russians were being discriminated against because of the war.
On the same day around 600 pro-Russian protesters in a motorcade of 400 cars flying Russian flags drove through Hanover, northern Germany. A further 800 demonstrators gathered for a march through Frankfurt after local authorities refused to allow a convoy. Some were chanting “Russia!” and holding banners reading: “Truth and diversity instead of propaganda”.
The protests came a day after a “massive pro-Russian rally” in Limassol, known as the “Moscow of Cyprus” due to its large expatriate population. Participants were videoed by drone pulling a Russian flag the size of a football pitch through a car park. Around 100 cars led a procession through the area. Organisers made speeches outside a stadium saying Moscow’s aim in Ukraine was to remove Nazi elements.
Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian politics at University College London, thought that the Kremlin could be “organising and orchestrating” the demonstrations across Europe.
The reason why that isn’t just conspiratorial is because we know that the Kremlin is concerned about the optics of international support, or really the lack of it,” he said. “Controlling those optics is something Russian authorities regard as an important thing to do,” he said. He cautioned, however, that it is equally plausible that the protests were “independent autonomous actions from a particular portion of the Russian diaspora who want to support their government”.
Mark Galeotti, an analyst and Russia specialist, said: “Of course there’s going to be top-down pressure to put on these marches. [Rossotrudnichestvo] is precisely there to reach out to these expat and ethnic Russian communities, and clearly it is often used as a way of creating shows of support for Kremlin policy.”
He stressed there is also a “bottom-up element” of support for Russia.
“You are going to have people who are genuinely enthusiastic about the Kremlin’s policies, but also there are going to people realising what they believe the Kremlin wants and jumping to providing it on the principle that they’re hoping thus to curry favour with Moscow.”
Galeotti added that the agency would know the right community activists and leaders to reach out to in order to nudge them to protest and offer support.
Another function of the demonstrations is to manufacture an image that can be relayed back to Russia to convince domestic audiences that the war has widespread international support, he said.
Sam Ramani, an international relations expert at Oxford University, said Kremlin orchestration is “very possible”, adding that it had “local stooges” to rely on to organise pro-Russian and anti-Nato groups “in concert with each other”.
He said this would be particularly easy to achieve in countries with strong expatriate communities, such as Germany, Greece, Ireland and Bulgaria. The Russian government is unlikely to entrust activities “to lone wolf civil society advocates” and would instead look to an agency like Rossotrudnichestvo, he added.
The Russian Embassy in Ireland denied helping to organise the convoy last weekend.
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