James Crisp
Europe Editor.
James Rothwell
in Vienna
30 September 2024 2:46pm
Austria’s foreign minister performed a long, deep curtsy before the star guest at her wedding, a smiling Vladimir Putin.
It was 2018, four years before Putin was to invade Ukraine, and Karin Kneissl is no longer foreign minister.
But the party that appointed her, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), has now won a general election for the first time.
Herbert Kickl, its leader, is savouring his triumph, but the real winner is Russia’s pariah president.
The FPO has a “friendship pact” with Putin’s United Russia party.
When Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Austrian parliament in March last year, FPO MPs walked out in protest.
They claimed that Austria’s constitutional neutrality was violated by the speech, but there is no question whose side Mr Kickl is on.
Why Austria never joined Nato
Vienna’s relations with Moscow have historically been closer than most European countries. Austria’s permanent neutrality was the Soviet Union’s pre-condition for talks that ultimately led to the withdrawal of Allied troops in 1955.
It is why Austria never joined Nato. Neutrality remained popular even as Sweden and Finland ditched it to join the Alliance after the invasion of Ukraine.
Austria is part of the European Union. It stops short of donating weapons to Kyiv, but does send financial aid and supports the bloc’s sanctions against the Kremlin. It has also taken in almost 80,000 Ukrainian refugees.
Even that qualified support will now come into question. The FPO has already attacked the outgoing government, accusing it of an “anti-neutrality policy” for supporting EU sanctions against Moscow.
The risk of future measures being blocked or watered down has increased if Mr Kickl can form a coalition government.
EU sanctions require the unanimous support of all 27 member states to be imposed. Other measures helping Kyiv could also be slowed down by an obstructive Vienna.
The expectation is the FPO will form a new government with the centre-Right OVP. It won’t be the first time the conservative establishment has joined forces with the more extreme FPO, which was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, but the first time that the FPO is the senior partner.
Some predict that the coalition negotiations will sideline Mr Kickl and defang his more extreme policies. But the FPO will drag the government farther to the Right on issues such as immigration and potentially Ukraine.
The success of the hard and far-Right in recent elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands has led directly to crackdowns in migration in those countries.
Hard-Right in European mainstream
The hard-Right is firmly in the European mainstream. Now the far-Right is on the march.
The difference between Mr Kickl and his friends Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders is that the French and Dutch politicians have tried to disown their former admiration for Putin.
The FPO, like the far-Right AFD in Germany, never has.
Ms Le Pen has worked hard to detoxify her party, but the FPO makes no such compromises. It calls for Fortress Austria against migrants, a war on “political Islam”, a ban on trans-friendly language and a refund on fines for breaking Covid regulations.
Its success now risks emboldening other pro-Putin parties in Europe to break cover, preach their distrust of Nato and call for appeasement of Russia.
Austria on its own is not influential enough to move the dial on EU support for Ukraine. However, a chancellor in an FPO-led government will be welcomed at the European Council with open arms by Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary.
Mr Orban has long railed against EU sanctions, met with Putin since the invasion and been a thorn in Mr Zelensky’s side.
He was thrilled with the FPO victory, which bolsters the ranks of an anti-Ukraine bloc, which includes the pro-Putin Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia.
Andrej Babis, the former Czech prime minister and another Putin apologist, also looks like he could return to power next year after his party won the most seats in senate elections this week.
All three preach appeasement, refuse to send weapons to Ukraine, oppose sanctions and want immediate peace talks that will favour Russia.
Hungary was long Europe’s soft underbelly, but it is now growing over central and Eastern states as the war drags on and the cost of living crisis bites.
The post Why Putin is the real winner of Austria’s election appeared first on The Telegraph.
