Is Putin trying to topple Merkel?

If Russian leader Vladimir Putin i was trying to use refugees to topple German chancellor Angela Merkel i, then Aleppo was a step too far, Norbert Roettgen, the head of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, has told EUobserver.

Merkel’s decision to welcome the huge numbers of people coming from Syria to Germany has drained her popularity over the past year.

She'll have to fight for re-election at the latest in September 2017.

But when German pollster Insa-Consulere, last week, asked people if she should quit now 40 percent said Yes.

“A year ago nobody would have dared asked questions like we did,” Hermann Binkert, the Insa-Consulere director, told EUobserver on Monday (8 February).

“But in the meantime, her approval ratings have dropped, mostly because of her position on refugees … Right now, there’s no discussion of an early election in Germany. But we can’t say how the situation will develop.”

The situation escalated last weekend, when the Syrian regime, backed by Russian air power, reached Aleppo in northern Syria, prompting tens of thousands of people, almost overnight, to flee toward Europe.

It had already escalated on New Year’s Eve, when migrant men carried out sex assaults against German women in Cologne.

Pro-Kremlin media tried to make things worse by spreading a fake story that migrants also raped a 13-year old girl.

The events have seen Alternative fur Deutschland, a far-right party which faces allegations of secret Kremlin funding, climb the polls.

They have ignited street protests, including by Russia-linked NGOs, such as the Internationaler Kongress der Russlanddeutschen, a Russian expat group.

They have also split Merkel’s ruling coalition, with Putin, last week, hosting one of Merkel’s critics, Bavarian centre-right leader Horst Seehofer, in his Moscow palace.

Russia denies any wrongdoing in Syria or Europe.

But for some EU diplomats, it’s beginning to look like a concerted campaign to unseat the German chancellor - the lynchpin of EU economic sanctions on Russia and of European unity more broadly speaking.

“If you look at what’s going on in Syria, look at Aleppo, you’ll see that Russia is the only one who controls the timetable of the refugee crisis. Its actions are designed to create as many refugees as possible. The target is quite obvious,” one EU source said.

He said Russia’s decision, on Monday, to hold military drills on the Ukraine border could mean worse to come.

“If heavy fighting restarts in Ukraine, it would create a new exodus of refugees. It would be the perfect moment [in terms of Russian interests],” he said.

“I don’t believe these are all coincidences,” another EU source said.

Far-fetched?

But for Norbert Roettgen, an MP from Merkel’s CDU party who chairs the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, the Putin-Merkel theory is “too far-fetched.”

Roettgen told EUobserver, also on Monday, that Russia’s main objective in Syria is geopolitical.

“They want to maintain their position in the region [the Middle East], to strengthen their military bases and to be part of the international solution … the increase in refugees and the trouble it causes in Europe is a welcome side effect,” he said.

It's welcome because the refugee crisis has divided Europe, he said.

“But the adressee of this problem is the EU as a whole, not a single state or person,” he said.

The German MP noted that even if Putin’s bombs in Syria were designed to harm Merkel, then the Aleppo siege might have been a step too far.

“The effect on Merkel’s standing is ambivalent. With so many new refugees on the Turkish-Syrian border, it’s more obvious than ever that this isn’t just a German problem. It strengthens Merkel’s case that it requires an international or, at the least, a European solution,” he said.

Roettgen said Russian propaganda also went too far.

German police debunked the story of the raped girl and prosecutors in Berlin have opened proceedings against the journalist, Ivan Blagoy from Channel 1, a Russian broadcaster, who reported it.

“The false claim of the 13-year old girl was overstated. It revealed, for the first time, the kind of policies the Russians are using,” Roettgen said.

“It reached a new level when Lavrov openly engaged in the manipulation of [German] public opinion,” he added, referring to Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, who said, on 26 January, that German police tried to cover up the crime.

The MP also said German authorities have known “for a long time” that Russia is funding far-right and far-left groups in Europe.

“It’s nothing new,” he said.

Mark Galeotti, a US scholar of Russian affairs, agreed with Roettgen’s view.

“I don't think Moscow is confident a new chancellor would be more sympathetic. Merkel is the person who can ultimately deliver partial relief from European … sanctions if some kind of deal is struck [on Ukraine],” he told this website.

“Moscow wants to keep her under pressure, to make it worth her while being less confrontational, but not, I think, to see her fall.”

Rotten herrings

Meanwhile, the story of the raped girl got wide coverage in German media and was repeated by pro-Kremlin outlets in the Czech Repubic, Hungary, and Slovakia.

An EU source said Russian media, in the first weeks of January, switched focus from Turkey, which shot down a Russian jet last year, to the refugee crisis.

He said another Russian story claimed that Merkel is infecting refugees with contagious diseases and deporting them to the Czech Republic in revenge for its refusal to join an EU migrant relocation scheme.

“Even if the stories are debunked, they make a mark. It’s called the ‘rotten herring’ technique and it’s described in FSB textbooks,” the source said, referring to Russia’s intelligence service.

The rotten herring technique is the idea that even if an allegation is disproved it stays in people’s minds because they talk about it.

The herring analogy comes from the fact that no matter how you handle a rotten fish, the bad smell lingers.

Transparency

The EU source welcomed the fact that Germany is taking action against the Channel 1 journalist. He noted that Ofcom, the British media regulator, recently censured Russia Today, another pro-Kremlin broadcaster, for fake stories on Ukraine.

“Free speech doesn’t mean you can frighten the public with fake stories,” the source said.

But for his part, Roettgen said there are other ways to react to Russian meddling.

“It’s not more regulation that’s required, it’s more transparency. Transparency is the best shield of democracy,” he said.

“We need to find out what’s being done and publish it so that the public has the full picture. There are some direct means to reveal what they [the Russians] are doing,” he said.