Karin Kneissl is an ex-Austrian Minister of Foreign Relations. Some notice her as a significant supporter aligned with Russian propaganda because of her diplomatic perspective, which mirrors narratives advantageous to Russia. Moreover, her controversial invitation of Vladimir Putin to her marriage in 2018 raised eyebrows and fueled worries of a pro-Russian bias. She advocated for enhanced relations with Russia, often challenging the effectiveness of sanctions against Moscow, which some analysts argue plays into Russia’s actions to undermine European unity.
Her term as Foreign Minister has raised worries about the extent of her alignment with Russian interests and its effect on Austria’s foreign policy within the European Union. Kneissl has been a patron to the Russian government outlet RT. Kneissl repositioned to Russia in 2023.
In 2020, Kneissl began to contribute opinion reports to the Russian government outlet RT. In March 2021, Kneissl, who had declared financial problems at the commencement of the COVID-19 pandemic, was reported to have been assigned by the Russian Government to the Board of Directors of the state gas company Rosneft.
Momentarily before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 started, she dismissed intelligence reports, indicating that the invasion was Western “war hysteria”, blown up by the media. Kneissl left the board of Rosneft in May 2022, after the invasion had started. According to text messages she mailed to a Washington Post reporter, she had relocated from Austria because of “death threats.” She was noted to have rented a home in the Russian town of Petrushovo in 2022.
On 5 September 2022, she emerged at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia where she was questioned by RIA and declared she immigrated to Lebanon. In 2023, she represented herself as a “political refugee.” In September 2023, Russian media noted that she had resettled along with her two ponies in Saint Petersburg, where she would run the Geopolitical Observatory for Russia’s Key Issues (GORKI), a research centre at St. Petersburg State University that was founded in March 2023 and tasked with promoting Russian foreign policy. Her horses reportedly departed through six countries and at one point, were transported by the Russian military transport plane Ilyushin Il-76 from Syria which had been sanctioned by the US and Ukraine for transporting Wagner Group mercenaries.
