at her own wedding in 2018. now, she lives in exile, forced out of austria, she says, by death threats. what does her story say about vienna s close ties to moscow and the impact of austria s neutrality? karin kneissl, in northern lebanon, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much for your invitation, mr sackur. well, it s a pleasure to have you on the show. i think we have to start with this question about your location. you were a senior member of the austrian diplomatic political elite, until recently. now, you ve left your home country and you re in exile in lebanon. just explain to me why. well, when our government literally imploded in 2019, all i wanted was to continue my academic work and publishing, but i had to find out that there was not a single contract. furthermore, a lot of harassment, also the death threats. but the bigger problem, honestly, was this de facto prohibition to work, so i decided to quit and first, i went to france and now, i m in lebanon and i che
now, she lives in exile, forced out of austria, she says, by death threats. what does her story say about vienna s close ties to moscow and the impact of austria s neutrality? karin kneissl, in northern lebanon, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for your invitation, mr sackur. well, it s a pleasure to have you on the show. i think we have to start with this question about your location. you were a senior member of the austrian diplomatic political elite, until recently. now, you ve left your home country and you re in exile in lebanon. just explain to me why. well, when our government literally imploded in 2019, all i wanted was to continue my academic work and publishing, but i had to find out that there was not a single contract. furthermore, a lot of harassment, also the death threats. but the bigger problem, honestly, was this de facto prohibition to work, so i decided to quit and first, i went to france and now, i m in lebanon and i cherish the freedom of mind here in leban
karin kneissl, the former austrian foreign minister who famously danced with putin at her own wedding in 2018. now, she lives in exile, forced out of austria, she says, by death threats. what does her story say about vienna s close ties to moscow and the impact of austria s neutrality? karin kneissl, in northern lebanon, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much for your invitation, mr sackur. well, it s a pleasure to have you on the show. i think we have to start with this question about your location. you were a senior member of the austrian diplomatic political elite, until recently. now, you ve left your home country and you re in exile in lebanon. just explain to me why. well, when our government literally imploded in 2019, all i wanted was to continue my academic work and publishing, but i had to find out that there was not a single contract. furthermore, a lot of harassment, also the death threats. but the bigger problem, honestly, was this de facto prohibition to work,
to you about russia. did you oppose at that time, after the invasion of parts of east ukraine and the annexation of crimea, did you oppose the intensifying eu sanctions against putin? what we did and what had been started prior to my nomination was an economic and civil society dialogue within the framework of the sanctions. so the sanctions ofjuly 2014 by the european union were in force but within the framework of those sanctions and we worked only within that framework we started to conduct a civil society dialogue and just like germany did with the st petersburg dialogue or france with the trianon dialogue, so. crosstalk i guess what i m getting too is mood music and tone, as well as specifics. for example, in 2018 and this is soon after the british government, and other european governments, have no doubt that putin ordered the poisoning of a former kgb agent in the united kingdom by the name of sergei skripal, after that, you, austria s foreign minister, chose to invite
attitude toward vladimir putin? well, when i came into office in december 2017, my determination was to conduct a neutralforeign policy, and there were three big chapters i wanted to start. one was reopening our relations with turkiye, turkey, which had been suffering a lot. i wanted to bring more geopolitics into our foreign policy, like opening up a china desk, which we hadn t had at that time. and as a neutral country, starting a strategic dialogue both with the russian federation and the united states of america. the dialogue with russia, we called it the sochi dialogue and the dialogue with the united states was the salzburg dialogue. so, these were the three biggest chapters we started with.