AfD lawmaker under pressure to say whether he received payment from pro-Russian network.
Europe’s Russiagate scandal may be about to claim its first political victim.
In a letter obtained by POLITICO, leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party pile pressure on a lawmaker to come clean regarding Czech media reports that he accepted €25,000 from a pro-Russian network that’s trying to influence European public opinion ahead of the June EU election.
The letter urges the lawmaker, Petr Bystron, who is the AfD’s foreign policy spokesman in the German Bundestag, to send a written statement to party leadership by 2 p.m. on Thursday detailing any involvement in the scheme.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a letter obtained by POLITICO, leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party pile pressure on a lawmaker to come clean regarding Czech media reports that he accepted €25,000 from a pro-Russian network that’s trying to influence European public opinion ahead of the June EU election.
The letter urges the lawmaker, Petr Bystron, who is the AfD’s foreign policy spokesman in the German Bundestag, to send a written statement to party leadership by 2 p.m. on Thursday detailing any involvement in the scheme.
“Europe is very vulnerable to Russian influence so we need to work harder on our resilience,” Jan Lipavský, the Czech foreign affairs minister, told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday.
Peter Stano, spokesperson for the European External Action Service, which drafts EU-wide sanctions at member countries’ requests, said such processes are “confidential and not for us to comment or pre-empt publicly.”
French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourné on Tuesday said France will push for European sanctions on those peddling disinformation to counter a growing Russian online threat to elections.
“Russia resorts … to lies and manipulation of our public opinions, in particular by financing interference, promoting false media, and accusing Ukraine,” Sejourné said at a press conference in Paris Tuesday.
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