MOSCOW, July 16. /TASS/. The prohibition of the Compact magazine in Germany and the searches in its premises that followed are connected with an interview Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave to the publication, a source told TASS.
The interview with Zakharova was published in Compact on July 13. Earlier on Tuesday, German Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser banned the magazine, and searches were carried out at the publication's premises and other facilities.
"The connection is obvious. There was corresponding material - an interview with Zakharova, where she called on the Germans not to go to Russia, but to save Germany by remaining in their country," the source said.
Before the interview, the publication’s journalist noted that after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine the main media in Germany "cannot" do any more interviews with Zakharova, and this conversation in the German media was the first since 2022.
The order of the German Ministry of the Interior on the ban states that the magazine, run by the famous German publicist Jurgen Elsaesser, is aimed against the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany. During the searches, documentation, storage media, and working capital were confiscated.
Compact was first published in 2010 and has since become one of the most important publications of the so-called new right, its publishers maintaining close ties with the Alternative for Germany, the small Free Saxony party, and activists of the right-wing extremist Identity Movement. 40 thousand copies of Compact were published monthly. The magazine also had a YouTube channel, which is now also banned. The magazine is no longer allowed to publish any information on pages on Facebook (banned in Russia; owned by the Meta corporation, recognized as extremist in Russia), X, Telegram, or sell its products.
In December 2021, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (counterintelligence) labelled the magazine as "proven right-wing extremist." According to the department, Compact disseminates "anti-Semitic, anti-minority, historically revisionist and conspiracy theory materials."
"Due to Compact's relatively broad reach, there is a risk that the magazine can contribute to social unrest and political destabilization in Germany," the counterintelligence report said. In addition, the department believes that since the beginning of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, the publication allegedly purposefully spread "disinformation" in favor of the Russian Federation. Editor-in-Chief Elsaesser, for his part, accused the German authorities of waging a "war" against the magazine.