The head of Austria’s liberal party has called on the government to investigate whether the leader of the far-right Freedom Party, Herbert Kickl, was guilty of treason following indications that he and his party had acted as the “long arm of Russian intelligence.”
Citing an in-depth report in POLITICO last week about the Freedom Party’s role in undermining the country’s intelligence agency, Neos party leader Beate Meinl-Reisinger warned that the question of Russian influence was one of “life and death for Austria and Europe.”
“The question, as POLITICO writes, is whether Kickl was a useful idiot for Putin or [whether he] knew what he was doing and for whom,” she said. “That would be a big scandal with a possible criminal dimension. I want to be clear: We’re talking about treason.”
The POLITICO article detailed allegations that former Austrian intelligence officers provided Russia with classified information for years, while helping Moscow to undermine the country’s spy service. The ultimate goal, according to Western intelligence officials, was to cripple Austria’s old intelligence agency, the BVT, and then rebuild it with agents loyal to Moscow.
A spokesman for the Freedom Party dismissed Meinl-Reisinger’s call for an investigation into Kickl’s role as “a baseless attempt to besmirch” his party.
The Freedom Party is favored to win both next month’s European Parliament election as well as Austria’s national election in the fall. That would put Kickl in a strong position to become the country’s next chancellor, an outcome that would put a pro-Putin party in charge of a Western European country for the first time.
Austrian liberals demand probe of far-right leader’s Putin links after POLITICO report
Source: Viral Showbiz Pinay
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