The Konrad Adenauer Foundation has flared up a dispute over the attitude towards Russia for years. The focus is on the former director of the Moscow office Thomas Kunze. The 62-year-old Sachse, who had headed the representation of the Foundation in Russia over several years until the beginning of the Russian War of Agency 2022, was listed on Thursday on the homepage of the CDU-close Konrad-Adenauer Foundation (KAS) as a contact for Russia. But this information is no longer up to date. At the request of the FAZ, the KAS confirmed that Kunze had given the responsibility for Russia and is now only dealing with Albania. The foundation left the question of who is now responsible for Russia in his place. She only indicated that Kunze had “offered” the withdrawal of the Russia dossier-“due to the reporting” .k. Was closely with the Putin regime to have FAZ articles about Konstantin K., according to several KAS employees who want to remain unnamed, rumbled to rumble in the foundation. A day after the article was published, a crisis meeting took place in the Berlin headquarters, and on which Kunze offered its withdrawal from responsibility for Russia. Because the case of the FSB man in the Bundestag is closely interwoven with Thomas Kunze and the foundation. K. received his position from shepherd with reference to his alleged belonging to the Russian opposition, and because he was connected to the Adenauer Foundation. At the beginning of the war, the Russian, who himself had been a Kas scholarship, had worked in Moscow for the foundation’s office. The foundation also made it possible for K. soon after the Russian attack on Ukraine to leave Germany as a “endangered employee”. Kunze played a significant role. As head of the Moscow Kas office, he contributed to the fact that K. could slip into the role of oppositional, although the Russian was closely connected to the Putin regime for years. K. was even responsible for a camouflage organization between 2014 and 2016, which, on behalf of Putin’s presidential administration, was to bind to Moscow’s renegade region. Extensive security checks. ” Many who are familiar with the Moscow KAS office, however, have strong doubts that Kunze has overlooked K.’s connections to Putin’s power apparatus. Rather, the proximity to the Kremlin fit the course that the Moscow office manager persecuted for years. Throughout the wire to FSB: K. was only a mini -jobber with the shepherd. With his house ID, however, he had access to many rooms and offices of the Bundestag. This is evidenced by a letter to the KAS chairman, the former President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert, of March 3, 2022, which is available to the FAZ. The sender of the letter is Michael Mertes, the former chief speech writer by Helmut Kohl and later State Secretary in North Rhine-Westphalia, who had headed the KAS office in Jerusalem from 2011 to 2014. Mertes has also been sitting on the “Moscow School of Civic Education” advisory board since 2000, which has been harassed by the Putin regime over the years. At the end of 2020, the Russian authorities declared the forum to be undesirable facility, which therefore finally moved its seat to Latvia. Soon afterwards, the KAS also went at a distance. Mertes complained that an annual conference was no longer held together, on which Lammert himself spoke in 2018. He had previously presented his concern at the Berlin headquarters of KAS and at the Moscow office manager Kunze and believed that he was accommodated. But the employees of the “Moscow School of Civic Education” later reported that they continued to “on a rubber wall” at the Berlin Kas headquarters. After this disappointment, the forum turned away from KAS and the Green-near Heinrich Böll Foundation, where, according to Mertes it described it, it was “received with open arms”. Kunze told him that Putin’s “Moscow School of Civic Education” represented left-liberal-green positions and therefore does not fit the Adenauer Foundation. But the Kohl man Mertes did not take this justification from the KAS representative. Rather, Lammert was concerned that “especially in the East German CDU state associations, Konrad Adenauer’s cancellation of every form of German rocking policy and his decision for the West integration of the Federal Republic was not inadequately received”. In December 2020, Kunze was awarded the Saxon Order of Merit by Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) because he had “even campaigned in challenging times” to continue the dialogue between Russia and Germany. You need personalities like him – “with a clear compass, but at the same time with understanding for different positions and compensation instead of confrontation”. Just a few days ago, Kretschmer asked again to return the Russia sanctions soon. The CDU member of the Bundestag Thomas Bareiß even advocates the restart of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipe. When Russia man of the Adenauer Foundation based in Albania, Kunze had already invited the former Gazprom lobbyist Alexander Rahr to a KAS conference last year. “In the tradition of right and left rocking policy” in his letter to Lammert, Mertes drew a different picture As a Kretschmer: The Moscow office manager “rather German -national positions in the tradition of right and left rocking policy”, according to his impression. Compared to a rank -high diplomat, Kunze should also have expressed that the CDU should not leave the communication policy to Putin to the SPD, wrote Mertes. That would explain why Kunze, as head of the Moscow KAS office like his late predecessor Lars-Peter Schmidt, relied on the help of people like Konstantin K., who has excellent contacts with the Moscow Machtelite. introduced himself as a surkov man: Putin, Surkow, then Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) and the then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in October 2016 at a Ukraine summit in Berlindpak. In conversation with several German conversation partners, the circle around the former deputy head of Kremlin Wladislaw Surkow has been included. Surkow is considered the intellectual architect of Putin’s system of rule. Europeans from the West who have met K. describe it as extremely smart, but also as cynical. With the help of KAS, K. made numerous contacts and took part in a number of dialogue formats both in Germany and Russia, which often took place in luxurious atmosphere. As KAS office manager, Thomas Kunze, however, presented his freelancer K. at events as representatives of Russian civil society. Around March 2, 2020, when a delegation from the Junge Union traveled to Moscow and completed a KAS dialog program there. A total of four board members of the party youth took part in the trip. The group was led by the then federal chairman Tilman Kuban, who is now sitting in the Bundestag. Konstantin K. spoke to the guests from Germany as Kas-Alumnus and IT specialist about Russian interior and foreign policy as well as the state of German-Russian relationships. The “Junge Guard” became known to a broader public in 2010, because at that time the former Russian secret service day Anna Chapman took over a leading function in the organization. CHAPMAN had been arrested and exchanged by the FBI with nine other Russian agents in New York a few months earlier and later made a career as a model and TV presenter in Russia. A member of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group-critical Bundestag member reported to the FAZ that K. had tried for a higher-ended position in parliament. As an employee Hirtes, the Russian also used the Bundestag’s house ID to get to his office space, but was asked to not enter them there. After leaving Russia, K. was also interested in accommodating Russian IT specialists in German companies. In the Federal Government, after the attack Moscow, there was considerations of bringing IT experts from Russia, of whom tens of thousands had ended up in Turkey, Georgia or Armenia, to be brought to Germany as specialists. Economic Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) was open to the idea. A task force made up of five ministries was formed to reduce bureaucratic hurdles. The East Committee of the German Economy was also involved. The working groups “protection of skilled workers” and “Russia” took care of this. An internal meeting of the two committees on September 15, 2022, which managing director Michael Harms opened, according to a document of the Eastern Committee, also took part in the Russian exile Anton Buter. But the Laber presented his recently founded company relokit that wanted to offer German companies to specifically search for specialists from the IT industry in Eastern Europe. Konstantin K. also took part in the meeting as an employee of Butter, he acted as a “Chief Business Development Officer” at Relocit. However, the planned recruitment of Russian IT experts was stopped by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. German security authorities had warned. They feared that the local companies could in this way bring Russian agents into their headquarters.
