Pro-Kremlin activists say they're barred from entering Germany

Pro-Kremlin activists say they're barred from entering Germany

By Sarah Marsh and Maria Tsvetkova

Two pro-Russian activists said that German authorities have barred them from re-entering the country where they had been operating when a Reuters investigation last year revealed their ties to the Kremlin.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Elena Kolbasnikova and her romantic partner Max Schlund have been organising pro-Kremlin rallies in Germany to urge Berlin to abandon its military support to Kyiv.

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The Reuters investigation, published last year, identified them as among key individuals pushing a pro-Moscow stance in Germany and revealed that they had received financial help from a Russian government agency.

The couple's home near Cologne, north-west Germany, was raided last August by German prosecutors. Earlier, Reuters reported that the couple used funds they had collected from supporters in Germany to buy walkie-talkie radios, headphones and telephones for a Russian army division fighting in Ukraine.

This June, they announced via their lawyer that they had left Germany and moved to Russia, saying they were forced out by a campaign of discrimination against Russians.

In a video posted on the Telegram messaging service on Tuesday, Kolbasnikova said the couple's lawyer had received a letter from the Cologne city administration, saying they were barred from entering Germany for 20 years.

The letter said the grounds for the decision were that Kolbasnikova and Schlund were a threat to Germany's security, Kolbasnikova said in the video.

The couple posted on Telegram parts of a document in German, which they said was the Cologne city administration's letter, setting out the terms of the ban.

The couple's lawyer in Germany, Markus Beisicht, said in a statement sent to Reuters that the ban on entering Germany was part of a campaign of "Russophobia" against them.

A representative of the Cologne prosecutor's office declined to comment. An official in the Cologne city administration said they had no immediate comment.

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Kolbasnikova was born in Ukraine but was granted Russian citizenship last year. Schlund is Russian. Both had moved to Germany more than a decade ago.