Thread by @mikercarpenter

A case study of Russia’s infiltration of the European far right in support of the Kremlin's geopolitical aims.👇<THREAD: 1/9>

In February 2018, right-wing militants bombed a Hungarian cultural center in the western Ukrainian town of Uzhgorod to incite Hungarians against Ukraine. uzhgorod.in/en/news/2018/m… <2/9>

Because Hungary is in NATO, stoking Hungarian animosity against Ukraine is a convenient way to sabotage Ukraine’s NATO aspirations. Keeping Ukraine out of NATO is in turn one of Putin's key foreign policy goals. uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rus… <3/9>

But the bombers in Uzhgorod turned out not to be Ukrainians at all, but right-wing Polish militants engaged in a false flag operation. Turns out the guys charged with the bombing were affiliated with a Polish far-right group called Falanga. euromaidanpress.com/2019/01/09/org… <4/9>

Although Poles generally tend to be anti-Kremlin, Poland’s far-right fringe is remarkably pro-Putin. Mateusz Piskorski, the head of Poland’s far-right Zmiana party (similar to Falanga), was for example arrested for espionage on behalf of Russia. theguardian.com/world/2016/may… <5/9>

Now add to the mix the German far-right. The three Polish suspects testified in court that the organizer of the attack was Manuel Ochsenreiter, a German far-right commentator who is ardently pro-Kremlin and appears regularly on RT & Tsargrad TV. kyivpost.com/ukraine-politi… <6/9>

Ochsenreiter is a “consultant” for the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which surged in the last German elections, and a self-appointed “election observer” in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. He speaks fluent English 👉  <7/9>

Ochsenreiter and his Polish accomplices share a common hero in Alexander Dugin, Putin’s court philosopher and bff to Alex Jones and the American alt right. thinkprogress.org/trump-white-na… <8/9>

The Uzhgorod bombing is just another example of how deeply Russia has infiltrated the European far right and how easy it is for the Kremlin to co-opt far-right fringe groups to carry out active measures. Read more in my article in the Atlantic 👉 theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… <END>