COLOGNE, GERMANY – In a square beneath the twin spires of Cologne’s gothic cathedral, around 2,000 protesters gathered in September to urge Germany’s government to break with the Western coalition backing Ukraine and make peace with Russia.
“We must stop being vassals of the Americans,” rightwing German politician Markus Beisicht said from a makeshift stage on the back of a truck. The crowd clapped and waved Russian and German flags.
A lean man in camouflage trousers stood at the side of the stage, obscured from the crowd by a tarpaulin. A few meters away, a burly man in dark sunglasses stood guard. The rally’s organizers did not welcome questions. Most declined to speak when approached by reporters. One protester tried to persuade a police officer to arrest a reporter as a Ukrainian spy.
The rally was just one of many occasions — online and on the streets — where people have clamored that Berlin should reconsider its support for Ukraine. That message taps into deep connections between Germany and Russia, with several million Russian speakers living in Germany, a legacy of Soviet ties to Communist East Germany, and decades of German dependency on Russian gas.
The stakes are high: if Germany, the European Union’s biggest economy, turns its back on Kyiv, European unity over the war will fracture.
Through interviews and a review of social media posts and other publicly available information, Reuters has established the identities of key figures involved in pushing a pro-Moscow stance inside Germany since the war began, including the two men hovering near the stage in Cologne.
The lean man is a Russian former air force officer. Originally called Rostislav Teslyuk, he changed his name to Max Schlund after settling in Germany a decade ago. In recent months, he traveled to Russian-controlled east Ukraine. More recently, a Russian government agency paid for his plane ticket to Moscow for a conference where Russian President Vladimir Putin was the keynote speaker. The agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, is under EU sanctions for running a network of “agents of influence” spreading Kremlin narratives. Its head has branded the sanctions, imposed in July, as “insane.”
Schlund’s burly neighbor near the stage, a man called Andrei Kharkovsky, pledges allegiance to a Cossack society that is supporting Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine. Schlund and Kharkovsky didn’t answer detailed questions for this article. In a WhatsApp exchange, Schlund wrote: “Eff off!” and “Glory to Russia!”
Reuters found that some of the loudest agitators for a change in German policy have two faces. Some use aliases, and have undisclosed ties to Russia and Russian entities under international sanctions, or to far-right organizations.
German authorities have linked one of the people identified to a far-right ideology, from which some proponents were accused by police in December of plotting to overthrow the state. He runs a German-language social media channel called the “Putin Fanclub” and, in an echo of the alleged plot, called on social media early last year for the storming of the German parliament.
Another is a Berlin construction company executive who used to be an officer in Russia’s military intelligence. He is acquainted with one of three Russian men recently convicted by a Dutch court for helping supply the missile that downed a Malaysian passenger plane over Ukraine in 2014.
A third man is a motorcycle enthusiast who posts online alleging atrocities by Ukraine’s army and has raised money for a Russian biker gang that is under U.S. and EU sanctions for backing Putin’s war.
Germany has so far earmarked more than €1 billion in humanitarian aid to Ukraine and neighboring countries, plus military equipment including advanced air defense systems. The majority of Germans still support Ukraine, but after a steep rise in energy costs, polls show fewer are keen on expanding military support.
The German government didn’t respond to detailed questions for this article but the Interior Ministry said it takes “very seriously” any attempts by foreign states or individuals to exert influence, especially “in the context of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.” The Kremlin didn’t answer requests for comment. Beisicht, the politician who spoke at the Cologne rally, said he has worked closely with the protest’s organizers. He didn’t address the findings about their associations.
Ties between Germany and Russia stretch back centuries. Empress Catherine the Great invited her German compatriots to emigrate to Russia in the 18th century. Between 1992 and 2002, around 1.5 million of these settlers’ descendants moved back to Germany, taking advantage of laws that allowed people of German ancestry to claim citizenship. German government research shows that this community votes more heavily for the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party than other groups. It wants to tighten immigration controls and limit Islam’s influence in Germany.
Dual identity
The public face of the Cologne protest was Schlund’s romantic partner, Elena Kolbasnikova, originally from Ukraine and now living in Germany. She led the crowd in a chant of “Peace. Freedom. Self-determination!” in her slightly accented German. Using flyers and social media, she and Schlund organized the demonstration and a series of other pro-Russian events.
Kolbasnikova acquired celebrity status in some anti-establishment circles in Germany last year after saying she was fired from her nursing job because of “Russophobia” — a claim that has not been independently verified. When addressing supporters, she stops short of explicitly supporting Russia’s invasion and instead focuses on the conflict’s impact on Germans worried about rising heating bills.
Schlund’s VKontakte social media profile says he studied at the Zhukovsky military academy, best known for training Russian cosmonauts. He appears in photos posted by fellow students. In pictures, including some posted by Kolbasnikova, he is shown wearing a military uniform. Kolbasnikova’s brother said that Schlund served as a senior lieutenant in the Russian Air Force. These details also could not be independently verified.
From around 2007, Schlund worked for private security firms, employment records show. In 2010, a Moscow court handed a one year suspended jail sentence for assault to a person with the same name and date of birth, according to police records. Schlund moved to Germany in 2012 to live with his then wife, a Russian of German descent, according to a person who knows him.
They have since separated. Kolbasnikova’s brother, who still lives in Ukraine, said Kolbasnikova’s pro-Russia stance on the war has hardened a family rift: “She may be my blood sister, but what she’s doing is not really right.”
Schlund completed a transaction to buy an apartment in Moscow in early 2022, Russia’s property registry shows.
Over the summer, Schlund and Kolbasnikova sent a message on Telegram inviting “like-minded people” to a day of music, food and sport in Duesseldorf in June. The venue, a banquet hall, was adorned with flags of Chechen leader and Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov, whose fighters are part of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. A minister in Kadyrov’s government, Akhmed Dudayev, posted pictures of the event on Telegram and praised Kolbasnikova and Schlund as “ambassadors of goodwill” who are “on the side of truth.” Chechnya’s Ministry of Information, headed by Dudayev, said in a statement it had nothing to do with organizing the event.
Also in 2022, the couple traveled to Donbas, the area of eastern Ukraine largely controlled by Russia. A pro-Kremlin media outlet, Tsargrad, posted a YouTube video of the trip in October. It shows Schlund and Kolbasnikova distributing aid, including tent heaters for pro-Moscow forces. The couple credit an organization called the People’s Front for providing some of the aid and helping to organize the trip. The People’s Front, which did not comment for this article, is a coalition of Russian civil society groups and its leader is Putin, according to the organization’s website. It too posted a video of the trip to social media.
The couple and their supporters marched through the streets of Cologne again one Sunday in early December, attended by police officers and a noisy counterdemonstration. Shortly after, they planned to take part in a forum for civil society activists in Moscow that was co-organized by the Russian government. In the end, Kolbasnikova told supporters, they missed their flight. In a post in an online chatroom she said the “sponsor” for the plane tickets was Russky Dom, a Russian cultural promotion body. Russky Dom is part of Rossotrudnichestvo, the government agency that is under EU sanctions. Grigory Mikhitaryants, an official at Russky Dom in Berlin, said his organization obtained tickets for two people to travel to the Moscow event but declined to give their names. Rossotrudnichestvo said in a statement it “has no relation to the financial and organizational arrangements,” of the couple.
Schlund and Kolbasnikova declined to answer detailed questions. In a WhatsApp exchange, Schlund wrote to a reporter: “It’s better for you, stupid cow, if you stay out of my sight.”
Cossack connection
Using photos on social media, three of the security stewards at the Cologne protest were also identified. All have taken part in multiple Cossack gatherings in Germany, this investigation showed. In imperial Russia, the Cossacks pledged allegiance to the tsars. Now the main Russian Cossack organizations are loyal to Putin, and they are fighting alongside Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
The main Cossack body, endorsed by the Kremlin, is the Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad, which has dozens of chapters in Russia and abroad. It does not reveal the source of its funding. In Germany, Cossacks affiliated to the Union lay wreaths on the graves of Red Army soldiers and have provided security at events run by the Russian embassy.
The burly man by the stage at the Cologne rally, Kharkovsky, is originally from Siberia’s Tomsk region. He now lives in Troisdorf, southeast of Cologne, and has run a small trucking business, according to posts on Kharkovsky’s OK social media account. He is regularly pictured on his and other social media pages at Cossack gatherings, often wearing a Cossack military uniform. Tattooed on his arm is an eight-pointed symbol that has been adopted by the far right in Russia and other countries.
Two of Kharkovsky’s fellow stewards have also attended Cossack meetings — a martial arts enthusiast called Vladimir Felk and a man who identifies himself on social media as Sergei Schneider. Felk has worked as a security guard and has run a logistics firm, according to posts on Felk’s OK social media account.
In pictures Kharkovsky posted from annual gatherings in recent years, the three men are joined by a security guard and nightclub bouncer called Grigory Kramer. Kramer is a representative of the Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad. A longtime former head of the Union, Viktor Vodolatsky is under EU and U.S. sanctions for backing Russian actions in Ukraine.
The 2022 gathering, in Hanover, welcomed Russian diplomats from the consulate in Hamburg, according to an account of the event the Russian Orthodox Church published on its website. A greeting was read out from the acting leader of the Great Don Army, a Cossack organization involved in recruiting soldiers and fighting in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. Photos shared by Kharkovsky on social media show him and other participants standing in front of a Great Don Army flag.
Kharkovsky put down the phone when reporters contacted him. In a subsequent exchange on a messaging app, he confirmed he provided security at protests organized by Schlund and Kolbasnikova but didn’t answer detailed questions. Kramer declined to be interviewed. Felk, Schneider, and the Great Don Army did not respond to requests for comment. The Union of Cossack Warriors declined to comment.
Russian military intelligence
When the German Communist Party held a “peace and solidarity” festival in Berlin at the end of August, it included a panel discussion titled “Peace with Russia.” Among the panelists was Oleg Eremenko, a Russian-German businessman who argued that Ukrainian youths are being taught to hate Russia. Eremenko has long been active in the Russian German community. He runs a construction business in Berlin. Clients listed on its website include the Russian Orthodox Church in Berlin. The Church said it had no record of its contractors.
