17 Facts About Karin Kneissl

Karin Kneissl was born on 18 January 1965 and is an Austrian diplomat, journalist, and politician.

Karin Kneissl served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2017 and 2019.

Karin Kneissl studied law and Oriental languages at the University of Vienna between 1983 and 1987.

Karin Kneissl left the diplomatic service in the fall of 1998, and lived in Seibersdorf near Vienna, where she was active between 2005 and 2010 as an independent local councilor on the list of OVP.

Karin Kneissl worked as a freelance journalist for German and English-language print media and as a political analyst for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation.

Karin Kneissl criticized Zionism, founded by Austro-Hungarian publicist Theodor Herzl, as a "blood and soil ideology" based on German nationalism in the 19th century.

At the height of the 2015 European migrant crisis, Karin Kneissl argued that most of them were economic migrants and that asylum seekers are "80 percent" young men between the ages of 20 and 30.

Karin Kneissl sharply criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel as "grossly negligent" for her selfies with refugees, and later described the EU-Turkey statement, 18 March 2016 as "nonsense".

Karin Kneissl was nominated by FPO as a non-party member for the post of Foreign Minister of Austria in the government of Sebastian Kurz.

Karin Kneissl's nomination was reportedly linked to the reservations expressed by president Van der Bellen concerning other FPO-endorsed candidates for the post.

In 2020, Karin Kneissl began contributing opinion articles to the Russian government outlet RT.

In March 2021, Karin Kneissl, who had disclosed financial problems at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, was reported to have been appointed by the Russian government to the board of directors of the state gas company Rosneft.

Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 began, Karin Kneissl had dismissed intelligence reports that an invasion was imminent, suggesting that this was Western "war hysteria" blown up by the media.

Karin Kneissl resigned from the board of Rosneft in May 2022, three months after the invasion began.

On 5 September 2022, Karin Kneissl appeared at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, where she was interviewed by RIA Novosti and declared that she had immigrated to Lebanon.

In September 2023, Russian media reported that Karin Kneissl had resettled along with her two ponies in Saint Petersburg.

Karin Kneissl was to head the Geopolitical Observatory for Russia's Key Issues there, a research center at St Petersburg State University established in March 2023 and tasked with advancing Russian foreign policy.