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> 1814 I think it’s much older than that, though. The Swiss confederacy had been trying to be neutral since the 16th-17th centuries. Also Austria does have so

by shjake 4y ago

> 1814 I think it’s much older than that, though. The Swiss confederacy had been trying to be neutral since the 16th-17th centuries. Also Austria does have some significant pro-Russian tendencies for some reason..

red-iron-pine 4y ago
The Russians exerted a vast amount of effort to recruit and generate sympathetic leaders in Europe (and elsewhere; i.e. Trump). They had a lot of sympathizers in Germany, and a small cadre of NATO-skeptics in France. Austria is a lot smaller and easy to influence. It's also not in NATO, and there is strong public sentiment to stay out of NATO -- which means there is a vacuum Russia can enter in ways that it cannot with full-on NATO members.