The aforementioned GRS Group Europe AG is not the only Swiss company connected simultaneously with ABOP and with German citizens.

On June 10, 2008, at the Russian Consulate in Leipzig, a certain Countess Irene von Kröninger von und zu Neidenstein was awarded the ABOP Order ‘Catherine the Great’ for ‘services and great personal contribution to the development of friendship and cooperation between the Russian Federation and the FRG.’ The ceremony was attended by Russian Consul General in Leipzig Gennady Golub and ABOP Professor Lorenz Haag, who presented the order. In her response, the Countess said: ‘Honorable Professor Haag, dear Lorenz! I ask you to personally convey my heartfelt and sincere gratitude to Professor Dr. Viktor Shevchenko, President of the Russian National Committee of Public Awards.’ That same day and at the same ceremony, Professor Haag awarded Consul General Golub the Order of Gorchakov, also an ABOP order.

The award ceremony coincided with the celebration of the 225th anniversary of the founding of the Russian Consulate General in Leipzig and the 35th anniversary of the start of gas supplies from Russia to Germany.

‘The Leipzig company Verbundnetzgas AG, whose chairman of the board was Professor Holst, was at the origins of these events and also took part in the opening of the ceremonial events,’ as stated in a photo report about this event, which appeared on the ABOP website on June 18, 2008.

A week later, on June 24, 2008, Euro Gaz GmbH was registered in the Swiss town of Selevin with a capital of 20,000 Swiss francs. The manager was Countess Irene von Kröninger von und zu Neidenstein, a resident of Munich. The company's stated objectives were ‘conducting financial and trading transactions of all kinds <…> Primarily in oil and other energy commodities.’ The company was liquidated only in February 2016. A whole tangle of very strange connections emerges between a major former GDR (and then simply German) company building gas pipelines and importing Russian gas, the Academy for Security, Protection, and Law Enforcement, and the mysterious countess, a recipient of the ABOP Order and owner of a newly established Swiss energy trading firm. And, of course, the Russian consulate.

***

In early June 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Germany. Professor Lorenz Haag spoke with Itar-Tass correspondent Vladimir Smelov about the talks between Medvedev, Angela Merkel, and Horst Köhler in an interview published on the ABOP website simultaneously with the report on the awarding of the Order to Countess Irene von Kröninger von und zu Neidenstein. Haag was introduced in the interview as the head of the German Agency for Global Communications.

Western expert Professor Lorenz Haag is an exceptionally interesting figure. Haag, a resident of the German city of Chemnitz (at that time without any titles), first appeared online in 2003 on the Kremlin website. He congratulated President Vladimir Putin on the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg.

Since then, Lorenz Haag has been appearing in the Russian press with increasing frequency, giving interviews on all sorts of current events in Russian politics, always praising Putin's policies and decisions. He is always interviewed by the same person: Vladimir Smelov, ITAR-TASS correspondent in Berlin. What does change is his range of titles.

In 2005, Lorenz Haag became the ‘Project Manager for 'Development of Relations with the Russian Federation'’ of the Southwest Saxony Initiative. This ‘Initiative’ is a public organisation affiliated with the state government of Saxony, dedicated to the economic and cultural promotion of the region.

Since 2006, Lorenz Haag has been the head of the German Agency for Global Communications. It is in this capacity that he is most often mentioned in the Russian press. An organisation under this name was indeed registered in Berlin in 2010, conducted no activities, and was closed in the spring of 2014. The meaninglessness of the name itself is characteristic. Such pseudo-scientific phrases are deliberately invented to throw dust in the eyes and prevent one from considering what an agency with such a name actually does.

At the same time, two-time professor (‘Prof. Prof. e.h.’) Lorenz Haag is the head of the scientific council of another organisation with the strange name ‘Institute for Economic Innovation’ (Institut für wirtschaftsnahe Innovation e.V.), located in the city of Chemnitz.

In 2007, Lorenz Haag was revealed as a member of the Academy for Security, Protection, and Law Enforcement (ABOP) during the presentation of ABOP awards at the Russian Consulate General in Leipzig. On March 15, 2007, the ABOP website published an appeal from Lorenz Haag to ABOP President Viktor Shevchenko requesting that Chancellor Angela Merkel be awarded the Order of Catherine the Great, 1st Class.

Over the years, Haag has been featured in the press as the editor-in-chief of the magazine ‘Elite of Russia’ for Western Europe and deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine ‘Practice of International Business’.

Since 2009, Lorenz Haag has served as the plenipotentiary representative of the Russian Cosmonaut Federation in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The Cosmonaut Federation, in its nature of operations and institutional roots, is very similar to the ABOP—a clear product of the secret services. And it has no fewer ‘public’ orders and medals.

The tasks that the Russian Cosmonaut Federation (RCF) is trying to solve abroad, and Haag's role in this, are frankly stated in the RCF's 2011 report:

"Currently, there are three organisations of cosmonautics veterans in the CIS countries, whose committees work with the FCR (these are: in Belarus – the Baikonur Veterans Organisation and in Ukraine – Kommunar and Polisvit).

Even before the FCR's fifth congress, there was an attempt to establish a ‘Russian Space Society’ in Germany. All the founding documents were prepared and sent there, but the issue remains unresolved, as the RSC representative is unable to resolve the legal obstacles raised by the courts that establish such organisations there. This applies not only to Germany, but also to the Czech Republic, Poland, and other countries. We are unable to find loopholes in their legal framework, so we can only rely on cooperation between the space-focused public organisations in these countries and the Russian Space Society.

Since 2009, Professor Lorenz Haag, the RCF Representative in Germany, has made a successful start and continues to serve. He has proposed and is currently implementing numerous events to promote Russian-German cooperation in space and to organise joint efforts between the governing bodies of space activities in Russia and Germany for the benefit of both countries. Not everything is always successful, largely due to the inertia of these governing bodies in decision-making, but his persistence inspires hope that the measures he proposes will be implemented.

In the CIS, we need to identify countries that are legally compliant with the creation of Russian public organisations on their territory, find "active cosmonauts" there, and try to establish structural divisions of the FKR in these countries." Essentially, the report speaks of creating a private intelligence network under the guise of public organisations.

As a representative of the Space Federation, Lorenz Haag has been a member of the German-Russian Forum since 2013. This is a high-level public organisation headed by Matthias Platzeck, former Prime Minister of the State of Brandenburg. Its official goal is to promote mutual understanding between representatives of German and Russian civil societies and the development of democracy in Russia. Membership is only possible by personal invitation from its board, and the opportunities afforded by membership are extremely beneficial for developing contacts in high-level circles of German society. This means that Haag was co-opted as a member of the Forum by personal invitation from a German board member.

In 2009, Voice of Russia quoted two German experts, Lorenz Haag and Alexander Rahr, in an article about the gas conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Since 2012, Rahr has been the scientific director of the German-Russian Forum. The 2008 exposure of the ABOP had no impact on Lorenz Haag's public standing. He continued to regularly appear in the Russian press, interviewing ITAR-TASS as a Western expert, until the fall of 2014. In his final interviews, Haag managed to welcome the annexation of Crimea by Russia and assured readers that the German public understood it. This is where Haag got himself into trouble.

A short remark by the author of this text on Facebook in the fall of 2014, stating that ‘Professor Lorenz Haag’ does not exist in Germany and that he exists only in the fantasies of ITAR-TASS correspondents, unexpectedly attracted the attention of the press and served as the trigger for an avalanche of revelations.

First, Radio Liberty responded, then numerous German newspapers and television channels, including Die Welt, Der Spiegel and many others.

German television reporters who managed to locate Haag in Chemnitz discovered that he was a Russian émigré who arrived in Germany in the mid-1990s and spoke German with a Slavic accent. Journalists from ‘Welt am Sonntag’ contacted the Cosmonaut Federation in Moscow by phone and received confirmation that Haag was authorised to present the Federation's awards. As they left, they were advised to ‘take care of your health.’

Nothing else is known for certain about Haag. Not his year of birth (presumably 1952), not his profession, not his places of study or work in the USSR or Russia.

Der Spiegel: German Kremlin agents are paranoid, swindlers, and anti-Semites. Spiegel magazine claims that swindlers, paranoid, and anti-Semites are working for the Kremlin's propaganda in Germany. The publication writes that the German experts appearing on Russian television have dubious backgrounds and reputations, and also believe in conspiracy theories and nationalist ideas.

Der Spiegel attempted to expose the ‘self-proclaimed’ German experts who appear on Russian television and claim that Berlin has sided with the Kremlin. One of them is ‘pseudo-professor’ Lorenz Haag, who claims that ‘Germany understands the position of Crimea and Russia.’ He also blames Ukraine for the breakdown of gas negotiations. In Germany, he is a ‘phantom,’ the newspaper writes. Not a single German newspaper has written about him in the past 25 years, Der Spiegel reports. He is also a laureate of the Moscow Academy of Security, Defence, and Law and Order Prize, which was once awarded to Markus Wolf, the former head of the GDR's Stasi foreign intelligence service.

The origin of Haag's academic titles is also unclear. It's only clear that they are fictitious. The first professorial title most likely means ‘Professor of the ABOP.’ The second indicates that Haag is an honorary professor at Pyatigorsk State Technical University.

In 2010, Lorenz Haag's only known published work was published in Pyatigorsk. It's a 42-page brochure entitled ‘A Man in the Age of Globalization.’ It's a eulogy to the rector of Pyatigorsk University, Doctor of Sciences Viktor Kaznacheev. This scholar also has a curious biography. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kaznacheev was the second secretary of the Stavropol regional party committee (under Gorbachev, the first secretary). When Gorbachev became General Secretary, Kaznacheev became the USSR Minister of Social Security and then the manager of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the RSFSR. The author of the book is introduced as ‘the head of the German Agency for Global Communications. A renowned expert on security issues concerning the domestic situation in Russia.’ (original grammar).

In his book, Haag mentions having known Kaznacheev for about 40 years. This means he most likely hails from the North Caucasus and was acquainted with the local party leadership from his youth. Haag's Facebook page contains no information about him other than his place of residence—Makhachkala.

It's safe to assume Haag is an officer, either in the army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or the secret service. If he had a civilian degree, such as an engineer, concealing this fact would be pointless and even harmful.

***

The strangest thing about this story is the astonishingly incompetent work of the Russian intelligence services. And German journalists have no doubt that this is precisely the intelligence services involved.

The final scandal involving ‘Professor Haag’ should have been programmed into this operation from the start. It's really impossible to seriously hope that none of the readers will sooner or later decide to check online whether such a ‘Western expert’ actually exists. And if they do, his exposure is a matter of minutes.

But, on the other hand, the system works. The completely fictitious German professor Haag functioned successfully for many years and had a chance to continue to function.

Well-known Western public and political figures who agree to act as agents of influence are extremely valuable, but finding, recruiting, and using them is an extremely difficult task. People like Romain Rolland or Lion Feuchtwanger in the 1930s, or former German Chancellor Schröder today, are expensive, difficult to manage, and capricious. They reserve the right to formulate their own statements, resist censorship, and, to varying degrees, care about preserving the reputations they have earned in their countries. Their truth and value are twofold. Just as in Soviet times, they promote Russian policies in their own countries, while their names are used in domestic propaganda to convince the population that the general Western public genuinely sympathizes with and supports the Russian regime.

The emergence of phantom agents of influence, which perform only the second function, but are inexpensive and completely controllable, should be considered a relatively recent Russian invention.

Overall, it seems that Lorenz Haag's public activity, which led to his downfall, was only the tip of the iceberg. Interviews under his signature are filled with standard clichés and were most likely written by an ITAR-TASS journalist without Haag's involvement, following propaganda templates.

Far more important is Haag's involvement in various German organisations, which provided him with a wide range of connections, including in political circles. It can be assumed that Haag's exposure as a fraudulent professor and Moscow agent of influence did not have a fatal impact on this hidden side of his activities. In any case, many years after the exposure, Lorenz Haag's name still appears on the list of members of the privileged German-Russian Forum. Ironically, alongside Helmut Hahn.