Karin Kneissl, Austria’s foreign minister from 2017 to 2019, has used an appearance on a Russian podcast to settle scores with her former home country.
“The people in Austria are hyenas”, 61-year-old Kneissl told Marina Zakamskaya, host of the podcast Bridge to the East, on January 20.
Kneissl has been living in Russia since 2023 where she works as a university lecturer and serves as president of state-sponsored think-tank GORKI.
“It was no coincidence that Hitler came from Austria,” Kneissl said while talking about her former hometown where she claims she was hounded as a dog killer and animal abuser. “I enjoyed living there but then they all turned on me,” she said.
In 2020, Kneissl had been accused of having wilfully had her boxer Niklas euthanised. Andreas Schweitzer, a prominent lawyer, had sued Kneissl for animal cruelty – who countersued him for libel.
In the end, the corpse of Niklas was exhumed, reportedly the first exhumation of a dead pet in Austrian criminal law history. A veterinarian found indications of a congenital heart disease that had warranted the euthanasia.
The Niklas affair was reportedly instrumental in Kneissl’s decision to leave Austria in 2020, in addition to her claiming difficulty with finding a job due to her closeness to Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In August 2018 she made headlines when she invited and welcomed Putin to her wedding.
She had previously been criticised for “cosying up” to the Russian dictator four years after Russia had first attacked Ukraine in 2014.
Kneissl subsequently moved to France, then to Lebanon in 2022, before finding a new home in Russian village Petrushevo two hours outside the Russian city of Ryazan.
Kneissl summed up her international experience on air: “I lived in Lebanon under very difficult circumstances. No electricity, high inflation. The people there lived on the edge of what was bearable. And still there was a certain humanity there. Not this malice, wickedness, and spitefulness that reaches me from Austria to this day.”
Kneissl also used her appearance to criticise Austria’s health and education systems, both of which paled in comparison with what her new home country had to offer.
“At many levels in Germany and Austria you only find cowards. Nobody dares to take responsibility anymore,” Kneissl added.
Her critical remarks were not well received in Austria.
Liberal MP Yannick Shetty (Neos party) accused Kneissl of “making the rounds of Russian propaganda studios at Putin’s expense with one goal in mind: To insult Austrians and badmouth our beautiful country and its people.”
Kneissl, who did not belong to any party at the time, became Austria’s foreign minister in 2017 under then-chancellor Sebastian Kurz (Austrian People’s Party, ÖVP). She was nominated by ÖVP’s coalition partner, the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ).
In her podcast appearance, Kneissl also spoke critically about her experience with the European Union during her tenure: “The European Council meetings were especially boring. When I was there for the first time in January 2018 I was shocked.
“The most interesting participant was [then-UK Conservative MP] Boris Johnson … The others just did not know much and were boring,” she said.
