Austria’s liberal Neos party is demanding the revocation of the Austrian citizenship of Karin Kneissl, the country’s foreign minister from 2017 to 2019.
The initiative was launched after Kneissl – who has been living in Russia since 2023 – spoke ill about her Austrian home country on a Russian podcast.
As Neos representatives told newspaper Krone yesterday, the party is now preparing a legal complaint with the goal of launching a citizenship revocation procedure.
“As a liberal, I am deeply convinced that our freedom of expression must also tolerate the missteps of former … foreign minister Karin Kneissl. Nevertheless, the question arises as to why Kneissl continues to appear prominently as ‘Austria’s former foreign minister’ when she so obviously despises and hates our country,” Neos MP Yannick Shetty said.
Shetty accused Kneissl of disseminating paid propaganda for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ilk: “In Putin’s service, for example at the Russian Economic Institute or as a columnist for the RT channel, which is banned in Austria, Kneissl symbolically spreads only one message: Austria is the gateway to hell, Putin’s Russia is the Garden of Eden.
“Anyone who believes that these appearances are voluntary and motivated purely by charity also believes in Father Frost,” Shetty said.
Austrian law allows the state to revoke a person’s Austria citizenship under certain conditions, such as when “a citizen stands in the service of a foreign state, and their conduct significantly damages the interests or reputation of the Republic of Austria”.
Other reasons include joining a foreign state’s army or fighting abroad for an organised armed group as well as retaining citizenship of another state even after receiving an Austrian passport.
There is no publicly available data on how many people have been stripped of Austrian citizenship in the past.
Kneissl had stirred up emotions in Austria by using an appearance on Russian podcast Bridge to the East to vent her spleen on her former home country, likening Austrians to “hyenas” and saying it had not been a coincidence that Hitler came from Austria.
Kneissl served as foreign minister in the centre-right coalition government of Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz. While formally an independent, she was nominated for the post by the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ).
In 2020, Kneissl left Austria, moving first to France and Lebanon before settling near Ryazan in Russia in 2023.
