The Kremlin interference in Europe and its alleged connections with the pro-independence political forces in Catalonia have led the livelier debate until the moment of the plenary session of the European Parliament that is being held this week in Strasbourg, one of the last of the current legislature before the holding of the European elections in June. The vice president of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinashas included the existence of “regular contacts” between leaders y secessionist activists with Russian officials during and after the unauthorized 1-O referendum on the list of the most relevant influence operations attributed to the Kremlin in the continent in recent years, even comparing it with the Brexit that led to the exit of the United Kingdom of the EU. “Europe’s era of innocence is over,” Schinas warned Russia.
Schinas has drawn a vast panorama of hybrid threats that loom over the EU launched from Russia, also focusing their attention on the recent revelations by the investigative website ‘The Insider’ that the Latvian MP Tatjana Zdanoka had coordinated its activities with agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) for the last two decades. “It is not only deeply worryingbut it is a duty (of the chamber) to find out who else has played the role of Moscow,” he stressed.
The former president Carles Puigdemont, whose entourage is also credited with contacts with Russian officials and citizens linked to the FSB, was not in the chamber of the Alsatian capital this Tuesday. In his place, the Junts per Cat deputy intervened Alfonso Comín, who has categorically denied the accusations and has insisted on the European vocation of his political formation. In his words, Junts aspires to a “more integrated” EU and to a Catalonia converted into a full Member State, and everything that the Spanish and international press about the dealings of Puigdemont and his entourage with Russia are “a farce”, Comín questions the impartiality of the Spanish justice system.
Answer turn
The response time has been taken advantage of by representatives of the three political groups right-wing in Spain –People’s Party, Citizens y Vox– to criticize not only the Catalan independence movement, but also attack the intentions of the President of the Government Pedro Sanchez to amnesty some of those involved in the Russian plot of the process, such as Puigdemont himself. Herman Tersch, a far-right MEP, has accused the Kremlin of offering “mercenaries and money” to the secessionists to “destroy the oldest nation on the continent.” Javier Zarzalejos, of the PP, considers that the Spanish executive wants to amnesty “not only Puigdemont, but Putin too.” Jordi Cañasfrom Ciudadanos, believes that it is necessary to “investigate” so that everything comes to light, which is why “there cannot be amnesty“.
Con very few exceptionsthe numerous interventions by MEPs in the debate entitled ‘Russiagate: accusations of interference in European democratic processes’ have had as lowest common denominator the confirmation of the tremendous threat posed by the interference and disinformation campaigns launched from the Kremlin, in addition to the need for the chamber to provide itself with additional instruments to counteract it, a circumstance that allows us to glimpse a broad consensus in the EU regarding this issue. Some MEPs have evoked the need to publish a report on the links and financing of populist political forces, the ones most courted by Moscow, even before the European elections, so that citizens come to vote “with knowledge of the facts.” The anti-establishment Irish parliamentarian Mick Wallace, member of the group ‘The Left in the European Parliament’, mocked the legislators’ interventions, going so far as to describe them as “incompetent.”
2024-02-06 20:04:37
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