In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Swiss politician and journalist, Roger Köppel (@KoeppelRoger). He’s best-known for his weekly magazine, die Weltwoche, and for his pro-Kremlin commentary on social and Russia-sponsored media, as well as on his magazine.

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Köppel has been the editor-in-chief at the Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche since 2006. Before that he worked as the editor-in-chief at Die Welt. After his stint at Die Welt, he suddenly returned to Die Weltwoche and took over the majority of the shares that owned...

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the paper, never disclosing where the money for this purchase came from. Köppel’s also been the member of the Swiss National Council since 2015, receiving a record of 178 090 votes. His political stance has been described as “right-wing conservative” - recently he spoke...

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at CPAC Budapest about the dangers of “woke conservatism”. The event featured many prominent right-wing figures, including Viktor Orbán, Kari Lake, Paul Gosar & Jack Posobiec. Köppel has announced that he’s leaving politics at the end of 2023, focusing more on his magazine.

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On the day that Russia launched its full-scale invasion in Ukraine, Köppel’s Weltwoche published a cover with Putin’s face and text “The Misunderstood”. In the article, he suggested that both journalists and intellectuals hate Putin because “he stands for everything that...

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...they reject, demonize and therefore must not be: tradition, family, patriotism, war, religion, masculinity, military, power politics and national interests". He continues that Putin exposes the “decadence of the West” and that he’s “our potential partner”.

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A week after Russia invaded Ukraine, Köppel called for “de-escalation” from the EU, stating that it shouldn’t pour “fuel on the fire”. Köppel’s been calling for the lift of sanctions on Russia so many times, that you’d think that he has some vested interested in all this.

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In May 2022, he tweeted about ruble being at “all-time high”, continuing that the sanctions make “Putin rich and ourselves poor”. Ruble’s value was highest (but not all-time high) after the tight restrictions Russia had put on it & its value has dropped drastically since.

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In April 2023, he tweeted about media freedom in Russia, stating that “In Russia I can download any media on the Internet”. As of today, Russia’s censorship organization Roskomnadzor blocks a small number of 4315 websites, including Instagram and Roger’s old employer, Die Welt.

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In addition to blocking thousands of websites, Russia also murders and imprisons journalists and opposition politicians. Maybe, as a journalist, Köppel has heard of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Anna Politkovskaya and Maksim Borodin?

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He’s also appeared as a commentator on RT DE, a German version of the Kremlin-funded propaganda channel, where he warned the West about interfering in Russia’s brutal invasion. He’s often declared that journalists should “stay neutral”, but apparently this doesn’t apply to him.11/22

Roger claims that there’s a “proxy war” going on in Ukraine, and he blames the West & NATO’s expansion for the whole incident, thus removing any sovereignty from those countries that want to join a defense alliance that would protect them from Russia’s imperialistic invasions.12/22

It’s fairly safe to say, that he has probably not read the articles about the plans that Russia had for the Baltics, Ukraine and for Moldova.

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During the same month he also went to Russia and interviewed Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. She’s been heavily involved in the abduction of children from Ukraine to Russia, and in March 2023, ICC issued an arrest warrant for...

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...unlawful deportation of children. The interview provides a rosy picture of both Lvova-Belova and of Russia, promoting Russia’s “traditional values” and bashing the “Decadent West” and its liberalism. Throughout the interview, Lvova-Belova parrots the classic Russian...

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...narratives like the Ukrainians using “children as shields” in Mariupol, or that Ukraine refused to evacuate children from Bakhmut. Of course the real truth is that Russia is trying to fix its demographic nightmare by kidnapping Ukrainian children.

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I’m sure that the lives of these abducted children will be peachy and rosy and all that, since Russia is well-known for taking such a good care of its own.

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While in Moscow, Köppel also met with Putin’s “chief propagandist”, Vladimir Solovyov. In his absurd Weltwoche propaganda piece, Solovyov repeats the lies about the “Ukrainian Nazis” and “genocide in Donbas”, while Roger refers to him as “Russia’s Woody Allen”.

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The article ends with Köppel’s thoughts: “why does one person, including our country, end up on a sanctions list just because he expresses opinions that do not suit our governments?”.

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Köppel’s worldview seems to be, that he simply does not care about the civilian bombings, war crimes, abductions of children, rape, and other atrocities conducted by the Russians, in Ukraine, and on a daily basis. Instead he declares the genocidal maniac who’s running the..
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...whole show as “misunderstood”, goes to Russia to interview his favorite propagandists like Solovyov, and even interviews Putin’s partner-in-crime, fellow child abductor Maria Lvova-Belova.

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Lately, several journalists who’ve worked for die Weltwoche have decided that enough’s enough - for example veteran journalist Henryk M. Broder has decided to leave the sinking ship. Others have followed suit, one of them calling the paper a “central organ of stupidity”.

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