Pretty sure plenty of German politicians were similarly cozy with Russia before.
A pretty basic assumption about Google and Facebook is that the US 3 letter agencies use the data in coups. Speaking as an Australian, the next time we have a Whitlam-style dismissal I assume Google will be covertly involved. Yandex not so much. Similar logic would hold in the Americas, Asia, and most of Western Europe. It'd be fascinating to know what role US social media companies were playing in the 2014 Ukraine revolution too as a comparison to somewhere that is very much a place where Russia would want to weaponise Yandexq.
You can be warm in the winter without doing deals with "the devil", and most average Austrian people don't benefit from that corrupt "trade", just a few banks and oil execs and real estate moguls who get to become even richer, unless you're gonna tell that their immense riches will "trickle down" to us plebs, any minute now.
>A pretty basic assumption about Google and Facebook is that the US 3 letter agencies use the data in coups.
Sure they do, which is why maintaining tech supremacy is a national security matter of the US, and an issue Europe doesn't get, that the more you fall behind in mainstream tech products and services, the more you are at the mercy of the US (and China).
The fact that US companies own all the biggest cloud, social media and chat platforms, gives the US incredible leverage, that nobody else has.
They also very lucky that working pipeline is not blown up.
Putin’s inner circle spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, had his daughter Elizaveta as an assistant to the far-right Aymeric Chauprade, a French Member of the European Parliament.[0]
You will see “coincidentally” similar connections across major western powers like the UK, US, Germany, and Italy.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/25/daughter-putin-s...
Putin likes to make a show of things.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-rus...