By EUvsDisinfo
The Kremlin has a problem with democracy – also with the European Union’s democracy. According to the Kremlin’s claims, there is not enough of it: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is an unelected leader. Russian state outlets conveniently forget the Spitzenkandidaten or the Lead candidate process that establishes a political link between the nomination of the President of the European Commission and the political composition of the European Parliament. Ursula von der Leyen ran successfully in that campaign.
The Queen’s army of bureaucrats
Ursula von der Leyen is now accused by Russian state outlets with global reach like RT, Sputnik and others of plotting a coup against the member states in order to militarise the bloc and lead it into war against Russia. She is allegedly assisted by an army of Brussels bureaucrats, equally unelected and unaccountable. In Moscow’s story, von der Leyen’s administration is based on an imperial Presidency: she is ‘Queen Ursula’, according to RT [Russia Today]; a Russian state-run influence and intelligence operation disguised as a media outlet. RT has been under EU sanctions since early March 2022; more about RT here.
Russian state-owned outlets tried to tarnish and denigrate the June 2024 European parliament elections in a long-running campaign which we unmasked in this series of articles. The campaign continues now with these claims criticising President von der Leyen and the EU leadership in general.
The start of the second von der Leyen Commission by 1st December 2024 has prompted another flurry of copy/paste attacks against President von der Leyen, some of the incoming European Commissioners, and the European Union in general.
Claiming ‘Russophobes’ are in charge
The main issue Kremlin-controlled outlets take with the next European Commission concerns its members and where they come from: ‘nonentities with inflated self-esteem’, according to the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, a onetime presidential seat-warmer himself.
According to this narrative, the incoming European Commission has handed EU foreign policy to ‘Russia-haters’. RT opined and singled out the former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as the nominee for High Representative/ Vice President, Josef Sikela, the former Czech Minister of Industry and Trade as the EU Commissioner for International Partnership, and the former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius as the Commissioner for Defence, whom RT called ‘Commissioner for War against Russia’.
These accusations are but the latest in a string of personal attacks against Kaja Kallas in particular, who is framed as a hysterical Russophobe from a country run by Nazis.
Achieving ‘Defence Union’
Not only does Moscow want to undermine the individual commissioners but the policy is also a problem – in particular, the idea of an EU ‘Defence Union’. Some Russian officials take these plans as a sign that the EU is now turning into a military alliance, which will be subservient to the United States and NATO.
The European Union threatens to ‘provoke a new big disaster with its militarisation’, according to Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the official Russian delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control. Gavrilov was quoted as saying that Russia was ‘closely monitoring the growing trend towards the militarisation of the European Union, which indicates the intention of this once purely economic and political association to continue confrontation with Russia’.
Going Nazi – again and again
One outlet attributed the move towards a Defence Union to ‘fear-mongering by the Baltic states, Poland and some other Central and Eastern European countries’. According to the Strategic Culture Foundation, which is found to be another Moscow influence operation with dubious background, the problem goes even deeper: imperialism and Nazism.
The claim goes: ‘NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is the continuation of Western imperialism to subjugate Russian territory that was previously pursued by Nazi Germany’. The further disinformation suggests that the EU has abandoned its traditional pacifism and has now turned into a ‘financial war machine’ for NATO.
The Nazi theme is an obsession, which has dominated Moscow’s propaganda since late 2021.
Seizing power
A final charge against President von der Leyen claims that she is planning a ‘seizure of power’ to turn the Commission into a supranational, authoritarian authority that can punish EU member states that disagree with EU policies decided in Brussels.
According to pro-Kremlin outlets these policies include: first, the EU’s unwavering support of Ukraine as the country defends itself against the illegal and unprovoked full-scale invasion of Russia.
Secondly, the EU’s push to ‘divert cohesion funding’ to ‘arm against the Russians’ and ‘overthrow’ those national governments in Member States that oppose the EU’s alleged militarisation.
No other topics were nearly as prominent in the pro-Kremlin coverage of the incoming European Commission as the EU’s wartime approach towards Russia and its alleged transformation into a militaristic bloc.
Stay tuned as we at EUvsDisinfo continue to track and expose these narratives over the next European Commission term. Don’t be deceived.
By EUvsDisinfo
