Stars of David on many houses – this is how Russia tries to cause chaos in Europe Indian children are already on winter holidays because of mega smog

Anatolii P. is someone who is always looking for workers for simple tasks. On Facebook and TikTok he posts offers to work as an unskilled worker in a bakery or to stock shelves, stating his telephone number. However, if you call as a journalist and ask if he was also looking for people to put Stars of David on houses in European countries, he hangs up. German press: “not good”.

Anatolii P. is a businessman with an office in Chişinău, Moldova. Not only does he post vacancies and marketing slogans on social media, there are also photos of him with the nationalistically charged Russian St. George ribbon and the Soviet flag.

Several sprayers checked into a hotel

French authorities believe that the co-founder of a pro-Russian party was at least a small cog in a big secret service game: he is said to have ordered the spray painting of Stars of David on the walls of houses – at least in France. Two couples who were said to have been traveling through France checked into a hotel in Paris. One couple is in custody, the other was able to leave the country.

The French findings cast similar incidents in Germany in a different light. Stars of David were also smeared on residential buildings in Berlin and Dortmund, causing a scandal. Were the smear campaigns in Germany also aimed at commissioned work – with the aim of spreading propaganda and dividing society?

In France, the wave of anti-Semitic spraying operations started later than in Germany. The neighboring country acted more professionally: in the last days of October, the perpetrators used stencils of the Star of David and blue paint. In Paris’s up-and-coming 10th arrondissement, among artists’ cafes and bars, a couple from Moldova was caught red-handed.

Suspicion: couple also travels through countries

The reason given by the two does not seem very credible: the 28-year-old and the 33-year-old said during their interrogation that they had traveled to Paris for romance. Because they speak Russian – many people in Moldova – they were approached on the street and asked to spray the signs on walls for about 50 euros.

According to the newspaper Le Monde, the Public Prosecution Service has a different theory: they suspect that the pair have already carried out similar missions in other European countries. There could also have been large-scale stickers about the Gaza war.

What is also suspicious is that the couple from Moldova were traveling with another couple who were spraying in different cities, but were able to leave France in time. Both couples apparently sprayed indiscriminately, and not specifically on the homes of Jews.

Telltale cell phone data

Mobile phone data showed that the four were communicating with each other, Le Monde reports. What is particularly striking is that both couples had contact with Anatolii P., the man from Chișinău. And the arrested couple sent photos to prove the job was done. Two photos from Paris then appeared coordinated in different bot accounts on Twitter and Facebook on October 28.

The texts were largely neutral: “It is an unnecessary provocation that only polarizes the situation more,” and “France is the land of fraternity, freedom and equality” could be read in French. But a German-language post also said: “It is worrying to see how the conflict is spreading to other parts of the world.”

In this case, the distribution took place in the service of a huge pro-Russian network: the accounts involved – now at least partially deleted – were involved in a disinformation campaign that t-online had exposed: since May 2022, some fictitious reports appeared alongside deceptively realistic online pages of major news media. This is why the coordinated campaign is called ‘double’.

Also the website ‘Reliable Recent News’ has emerged from nowhere and spreads anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian sentiments in different languages. According to “Le Monde”, the stories with the photos of the Star of David had also spread their content. And because they posted the photos when there was no media coverage yet and “Le Monde” couldn’t find the photos anywhere else, it seems clear: the painters must have been involved in distributing the photos.

Photo of Star of David in Berlin came from a resident

In Germany it was different with the first case that became public and caused disbelief: the German-Jewish ‘Bild’ journalist Antonia Yamin posted a photo of a Star of David from Berlin on the morning of October 13. A 26-year-old Jewish woman discovered the marking on the door of her apartment in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district the night before. She photographed the scene, posted the image to a group of Israelis, where Yamin saw it and contacted her. This is how Yamin describes it to t-online.

Without any artificial amplification, the image spread extremely quickly after the reporter posted it and was found in all media.

The Federal Association of Research and Information Centers for Antisemitism has now become aware of this. V. (Rias) in Berlin has twelve similar cases. Stars of David were sometimes painted small behind a name, sometimes large on a house wall, in different colors. “A uniform handwriting is not clearly recognizable in Berlin,” says Julia Kopp, project officer at Rias Berlin.

But in five cases in Dortmund. The Stars of David there were sprayed before those in Berlin. However, the cases only became known days later, on October 16, when there had been a lot of attention for a long time because of the events in Berlin. Dortmund police reported: Between October 11, 6:00 PM and October 12, 4:45 PM, Stars of David were randomly sprayed on houses in several adjacent streets.

Rias is unaware that Jewish people actually live in one of the former coal mine houses. If the random spray attacks were a controlled action: there was no need to artificially publicize the matter using bots. After all, Germany was already talking about the issue because of Berlin.

Russia paints a picture of chaos in Europe

Is there also a possible connection with Russia in Germany? Some things speak for it, some things speak against it – and the police are still completely holding back. The Berlin police and the Dortmund police announced timely answers to questions from t-online on Wednesday morning. State security is currently very busy.

And the Russian agitation site ‘Reliable Recent News’ of the ‘Doppelgänger’ network spreads articles about anti-Semitism in Europe: ‘The authorities are absolutely powerless; They cannot even protect their own citizens if a real threat arises.”

In a text the site quotes Johannes Winkel, the federal chairman of the ‘Junge Union’. Winkel called it an ‘unprecedented shame’ that ‘in Germany, houses in which Jews live are again marked with the Star of David after 80 years’. The Russian propaganda medium picked a sentence from an interview with ‘Bild’: ‘For Jews, daily life in Israel is safer than in the big cities of Germany, France and England, despite a rain of rockets from Hamas.’

At least in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, citizens are apparently not safe from suspected Russian graffiti greetings from Chisinau in the Republic of Moldova. However, this is all misunderstood when it comes to Anatolii P.: The Stars of David are an action to “support the Jews of Europe”. In any case, during the day he had spoken to a French journalist from ‘Liberation’.

Sources

(t-online/dsc)