Pro-Russian lobbying in modern Germany

Abstract

The article presents the political and media process of the formation of the public opinion between Germany and the Russian Federation on the background of increasing the East-West crisis, especially taking into consideration the Neue Ostpolitik that Germany is following. With the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and after the western sanctions were imposed on Moscow, the Russia propaganda machine started to work on every political, economic and media level. The paper analyses its system and mechanism in the context of the dynamically changing international order. The author identifies the German Russlandversteher, defines the most active institutional forms of the German-Russia cooperation and economic contacts under the patronage of both governments that can have influence on decision process of the German government. To the most important actors in the Russian lobbying belong German political par­ties, representatives of the German world of culture, art, media, whose popularity can modify the perception of the Russian politics against the Ukraine and the European Union.