Right-wing Member of the European Parliament Fernand Kartheiser plans to visit Moscow early next week by invitation of Russia’s State Duma to talk about Ukraine, the Luxembourgish MEP announced on Friday. 

Kartheiser told POLITICO that, in addition to parliamentarians, he will also meet with Russia’s deputy foreign minister and the foreign ministry’s director for bilateral relations while in Moscow on Monday and Tuesday. 

“In all those meetings, I am going to talk about peace in Ukraine,” Kartheiser said.

“I will also raise the issue of human rights in Russia, and I will, in general terms, discuss the current worrying state of international relations,” he added.

Kartheiser said he is paying for the trip with his private funds “given that the European Parliament is blocking MEPs’ diplomatic efforts to meet with the Russian Federation.” He also said he will not receive funding from “other sources.”

In a video posted on social media, the lawmaker said he was also going to talk about Luxembourg’s bilateral relations with Russia. “On the issues that still divide us, we will try to build bridges and seek common solutions; and on the issues that unite us, we will try to reestablish channels of cooperation,” he added. 

His political family in the European Parliament, the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), have disowned Kartheiser and his visit to Russia — and are threatening to kick him out.

‘In an individual capacity‘

ECR group spokesperson Stephen Jones told POLITICO that Kartheiser, who is the only Luxembourg member in the group, is going to Moscow “in an individual capacity as a guest of the Russian authorities, with a program organized by the Russian authorities.”

“Our group’s unequivocal position on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine remains just as unequivocal as it was yesterday, and just as unequivocal as it will be tomorrow,” Jones said.

ECR has condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, and a majority of its members have been staunch supporters of sending military aid to Kyiv.

ECR’s leadership has been debating for months whether to kick Kartheiser out of the group over his pro-Russian stance. 

“If he goes, I will submit a motion to have him removed from the group,” the co-chair of the ECR group, Patryk Jaki, told POLITICO.

“ECR, and especially PiS [Poland’s Law and Justice party], is the largest party in Europe that has consistently opposed the policy of ‘resets with Moscow’ for decades. This was the case with the Nord Stream projects and when all of Europe was engaging in ‘resets with Russia’ before the invasion of Ukraine,” said Jaki, who is affiliated with Law and Justice.

European Parliament spokesperson Delphine Colard said that members traveling to Moscow “do so in a personal capacity.”

In early May, coinciding with Putin’s “Victory Day” celebrations, Cypriot non-attached MEP Fidias Panayiotou visited Moscow with other EU lawmakers from Germany’s Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), Slovakia’s SMER and Czechia.

That caused a backlash from the Parliament president and the leaders of the main political groups, with the liberal Renew Europe president calling for an investigation into whether the lawmakers had used Parliament funds for the visit.