Not “Putin’s whore”: now installed in Russia, the ousted Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karin Kneissl is defending herself, at a time when Vienna is overtaken by its reputation as a nest of Moscow spies.
“I was insulted and really reduced to an agent of the Kremlin,” explains this 59-year-old former diplomat in an interview given by videoconference to AFP. “But I haven’t set foot there since 2018, they have other fish to fry.”
From his time in government, we remember his waltz with the Russian president invited to his wedding, while Austria was presiding over the EU.
At the time, she headed the Alpine country’s diplomacy after being appointed at the end of 2017 by the far-right FPÖ movement, allied to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.
Karin Kneissl has since distanced herself from a group “which tried to get rid of” her because she was “too independent”, she assures.
It also sweeps away any role played in the cases of espionage for the benefit of Russia which recently emerged, the Secretary General of his ministry having been in contact, according to investigators, with a suspected double agent.
Since the arrest of this dark novel character, Egisto Ott, information has been coming from the prosecution, according to which moles close to the FPÖ are still operating in the mysteries of the State.
“I have never met Mr. Ott, I know nothing about all this and I am at the disposal of justice,” pleads Ms. Kneissl.
– “Odyssey” –
After having enjoyed strong popularity among Austrians at the top of the state, she says she experienced a brutal descent into hell, branded by the images of her “dance with the Tsar” that went around the world.
Speaking eight languages, Karin Kneissl says she left Austria in September 2020, a little over a year after leaving the government.
She recalls the attacks she was subjected to in the street and the insults that were thrown her way, while “she happened to be called Putin’s whore”.
A regular on the air of Russia Today, this graduate of the ENA, perfect French-speaking, first left for France, where her interventions on the channel subsequently banned from broadcasting in the EU did not, apparently. -it, not been appreciated by the authorities.
Unable to open a bank account and find lasting housing, she says she “survived on the street, on a mattress” for a time, before heading to Lebanon, which she knows well as a specialist in the Middle East.
Then the University of Saint Petersburg offered her the opportunity to head a research institute, which she did in September 2023, “finally packing her bags” in Russia, “very, very tired by this odyssey” .
She had previously served on the Supervisory Board of Russian oil giant Rosneft, a position she left in May 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which she did not explicitly condemn during an interview with the BBC last year.
For this function, she says she received a total of “350,000 dollars net”.
– With his ponies –
To reach Russia from the Middle East, she admitted to having contacted the Russian authorities “for the first time”, for lack of a solution, with a view to “moving” animals, including two ponies, which had followed her throughout her journey.
Happy with anonymity in her host country, she says her role now consists of “creating ideas”, for example to “ensure Russian exports” without depending on Western players dominating maritime transport.
She observes in passing “as the world is moving towards other horizons”, Russia treated as a pariah by its natural clients establishing “accelerated” links “with Iran, China or Zimbabwe”.
Now separated from her husband, a rare Western personality who has moved to the East, Karin Kneissl wants to settle down permanently in a rural area on the outskirts of Moscow, go teach throughout Russia and commute to Saint Petersburg.
She looks back on these recent years of controversy in a book published in Russian and affirms, despite all her setbacks, that she does not regret having fooled with Vladimir Putin in her wedding dress.
“Minister or not minister, I dance with whoever I want,” she says.
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