‘Research centre’ is a phrase that can mean virtually anything: a genuine scientific institution, or something quite the opposite, a sham. Such a name could conceal a group of ‘scientific’ falsifiers, a group of ideological propagandists, or a human intelligence centre. Or all three, even all three. Over the past couple of decades, the Putin regime has been proliferating such phony institutions, both domestically and internationally. At first glance, these imitation research centres are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. However, there are a number of signs that make them fairly easy to identify. First, these fakes usually have very grandiose names, claiming the global significance of the issues they supposedly study—‘Club of Geopolitical Studies,’ ‘Institute of Dialogue of Civilizations,’ ‘Centre for Global Problems,’ and so on.
Secondly, it's easy to see that the public activities of such organisations boil down to promoting Russian policy and the achievements of the Putin regime. The private side of this activity is also easy to discern—it lies entirely within the purview of the Russian intelligence services and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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One such unnatural organisation hatched in Berlin in 2016. It's called the German Centre for Eurasian Studies (GCES). The term ‘Eurasian’ is itself an indicator. It has long been reserved for the charlatan ‘International Eurasian Movement,’ led by Alexander Dugin.
As stated in Wikipedia, ‘Dugin's political activities are aimed at creating a Eurasian superpower through the integration of Russia with the former Soviet republics into a new Eurasian Union (EAU).’
The centre's management consists of two people. Director – Manuel Ochsenreiter, Germany (1976–2021); Vice-Director – Dr. Mateusz Piskorski, Poland (1977).
German journalist Manuel Ochsenreiter, who died in Moscow in 2021, was a right-wing or, as he put it, ‘conservative’ German journalist and editor-in-chief (2004-2011) of the magazine ‘Deutschen Militärzeitschrift’ (German Military Magazine) and the magazine ‘Zuerst!’ Over the years, Ochsenreiter gave numerous interviews to the Russian press as a ‘Western expert’ who endorsed Putin's policies, traveled regularly to Moscow, and acted as an ‘independent observer’ during elections in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). For example, in July 2016, the Novorossiya news agency published an interview with him under the headline ‘German observer in the DPR: the war can be ended simply by cutting off funding for Kyiv.’
Mateusz Piskorski, a right-wing Polish politician, director of the European Centre for Geopolitical Analysis and founder (in 2015) of the pro-Russian Smena party, which advocates Poland's withdrawal from NATO. Piskorski was arrested in May 2016 by the Polish Internal Security Agency on charges of espionage for Russia and was released on bail pending trial in 2019. A biography on the website of the Centre for Eurasian Studies refers to Piskorski as a ‘political prisoner.’
The centre also has two experts: Leonid Savin (Russia) and Kevork Almassian (Syria). Leonid Savin is the commissioner of the Eurasian Youth Union (EYU), part of the International Eurasian Movement chaired by Alexander Dugin, and the editor-in-chief of the journal Geopolitika and the web portal Geopolitika.ru. Savin also served as the coordinator of the EYU Ukraine.
Kevork Almazian, a Syrian with Armenian roots living in Germany, is, by his own admission, an ‘independent political journalist.’
In addition to Ochsenreiter and Piskorski, the commercial register lists another member of the society's board, Fabian Mirtschew. Mirtschew is listed as the chairman of the society, while Ochsenreiter is his deputy. Mirtschew's name does not appear on the centre's website. However, there is a lawyer named Fabian Mirtschew in Berlin whose office address matches that of the Eurasian Studies Centre. In December 2016, Ochsenreiter and Mirtschew visited Donetsk together, which had been captured by separatists, and appeared on the propaganda television programme ‘Without Ties.’ Apparently, Mirtschew simply provided his address for the centre's registration, formally becoming the third board member, which is required for the society's registration. No information could be found about the other members of the centre.
The public organisation ‘Deutsches Zentrum für Eurasische Studien e.V.’ was registered on August 3, 2016. According to Ochsenreiter, it is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation, financed only by its members - ‘...there is no ’Russian Soros‘ behind it, only its employees.’
The ‘Partners’ section of the centre's website lists two organisations: the Polish internet portal Geopolitika.org and the Serbian Facebook group Centre for Geostrategic Studies (Центар за газрастешке студиje).
The first publication on the centre's website is dated April 16, 2016. This is a message about Jörg Urban, a member of the Saxon parliament from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, demanding the immediate lifting of sanctions against Russia, recognition of the results of the 2014 Crimean referendum, and the unification of Crimea with Russia.
All subsequent articles (the website was in English) also fit perfectly within the framework of current Russian propaganda. They supported Putin's policies in all their aspects, promoting the AfD, Marine Le Pen, Bashar al-Assad, and the Donetsk and Luhansk republics. Interviews were published with people like Leonid Reshetnikov (director of the Moscow Institute for Strategic Studies and a retired lieutenant general in the Foreign Intelligence Service) and Alexander Dugin. Judging by the publications, Manuel Ochsenreiter was the only active figure in the Centre. With his death in 2021, the Centre's public activities also ceased.
In Ochsenreiter's case, it's fairly easy to determine the approximate time of his recruitment by Moscow. The author of this text communicated with Manuel Ochsenreiter between 2009 and 2012 regarding publishing matters. At that time, there was not the slightest hint of any contacts between Ochsenreiter and Moscow. Moreover, the publications being discussed at the time by the publishing house with which Ochsenreiter was associated (a collection of scholarly works on the history and preconditions of World War II, co-authored with Viktor Suvorov), were, to put it mildly, at odds with the key tenets of Putin's propaganda. In any case, until the spring of 2012, there were no signs of friendly contacts between Ochsenreiter and Moscow.
Chronologically, the first citation of Ochsenreiter's statements in the Russian press (still relatively neutral) dates back to November 2012. By June 2013, Ochsenreiter was already supporting Russia's position in the Pussy Riot case. Ochsenreiter fully engaged in Russian propaganda in 2014, and his activity steadily escalated. A qualitative leap was the establishment of the German Centre for Eurasian Studies in 2016. It is safe to assume that Manuel Ochsenreiter's transformation into an agent of Moscow's influence occurred sometime in the second half of 2012.
What I have no doubt about is the contract nature of Ochsenreiter's work as Putin's propagandist. Clearly, Ochsenreiter's extensive connections in ‘conservative’ circles of German society were extremely useful to his Moscow partners. But no matter how ‘right-wing’ Ochsenreiter's own views, it would be wrong to explain his cooperation with Moscow by them. Just as it would be wrong to explain the Moscow connections of Stalinist Left Party leader Sahra Wagenknecht or former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder by ideological affinity.
The Soviet secret services always relied much more readily on paid agents than on committed ones. Firstly, they weren't expected to pull off any surprises, and secondly, committed ones were hard to find… especially when it came to Putin's regime.