The involvement of the 39-year-old has raised fears that Russia may have plotted the incident to disrupt the expansion of NATO. Frick’s Twitter feed includes pictures of him posing in a Putin T-shirt and showing off a Putin calendar.
An effigy of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was strung from a lamppost a week earlier. Turkey also wants Sweden to extradite people it says are militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
After the Koran-burning stunt,Turkey immediately cancelled a visit to Ankara by Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jannson and threatened to block its NATO accession.
Paludan,is Danish far-right politician who also holds Swedish citizenship,has previously sparked riots in Sweden by announcing a “Koran-burning tour” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He has burnt the book in Denmark and been found guilty of racism there three times receiving suspended or one-month jail sentences.
But he told Swedish media that Frick,who runs the right-wing populist site Nyheter Idag and hosts a show on a TV station funded by the nationalist Sweden Democrats party,paid for this stunt. He said Frick even promised to cover any damages Paludan incurred as a result of the action.
In 2019,The New York Times profiled Frick in a report on how the Kremlin was befriending and amplifying divisive voices in Sweden. Frick accusedThe New York Times of misrepresentation on Twitter after the article was published,sayingRT was his client but not his employer.