Russia and European far right

[kaur]

We don't need to wonder too far to see dejavu. I hope Merkel stays strong. I suspect SPD has not lost their compass.

MITROKHIN'S INFORMATION ON the KGB's West German agents, though extensive, is not comprehensive. There is, for example, intriguing evidence in the files seen by Mitrokhin of a KGB agent in the entourage of Egon Bahr, one of Helmut Schmidt's most trusted advisers and a leading architect of Ostpolitik. (There is no suggestion that the agent was Bahr himself.) On February 5, 1981 Andropov sent Brezhnev and the CPSU Central Committee an intelligence report (no. 259-A/OV ), marked "of special importance," which recounted a telephone conversation on January 27 between Schmidt and Ronald Reagan, whose inauguration as president of the United States had taken place a week earlier, and gave details of Schmidt's subsequent discussions with Bahr and other advisers. To Schmidt's irritation, Reagan asked for a month's delay to the chancellor's visit to Washington, previously arranged for March 3, on the grounds that the President was not yet ready "for a serious discussion of foreign policy problems." Schmidt told his advisers that this was a deliberate delaying tactic by the new Reagan administration "designed to enable Washington to gain time to build up its armaments with the aim of overtaking the USSR in the military field."

The KGB source also reported complaints by Schmidt to Bahr and others that Bonn was flooded with specialists sent by Washington with the aim of halting the growth of commercial contacts between West Germany and the Soviet Union. Schmidt rightly believed that the Reagan administration was out to torpedo the negotiations between Bonn and Moscow on the construction of pipelines to bring natural gas from Siberia to the FRG, which Washington feared would make West Germany dangerously dependent on Soviet energy supplies. Moscow was doubtless delighted by Schmidt's intention to press ahead with the negotiations as quickly as possible in order to present Reagan with a fait accompli.

Social Democratic fingerprints are all over plans for a second Baltic pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which is to be built even though the existing one is operating at only half capacity. A deal between Russia and Germany was announced in Moscow last autumn by Sigmar Gabriel, the economics minister and the Social Democrats’ boss.

Nord Stream 2 has few friends outside Russia and the Social Democrats. Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic countries are aghast at what they see as a sinister pact to boost German business at the expense of their energy security. Russia could junk its pipelines that run through Poland and Ukraine, leaving them gas-strapped and at the mercy of powerful (and historically unfriendly) neighbours. The European Commission sees it similarly. In 2014 it blocked another pipeline project, under which Russian gas was to run through the Black Sea and central Europe. America, worried that Nord Stream 2 would deprive Ukraine of transit fees, is also opposed.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe...y-bear-backers