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Are people in other countries interested in the German campaign? How is Angela Merkel seen in other parts of the world? We asked our correspondents.

Russia: Merkel Stands for the Sanctions

When the clock strikes 8 p.m. in Moscow on Sundays, the apocalypse is palpable. That's when television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov begins commenting on that week's world events from the Russian perspective on his show "Vesti nedeli." Among his favorite topics of discussion are the perfidy of the United States and the weakness and degeneration of Europe, which in his telling has abandoned its Christian values and allowed Islamists to flood the Continent. If Europe should ultimately collapse – and it looks like it will! – then Angela Merkel will be to blame, or so it seems after spending an evening watching Kiselyov on television. The German chancellor, he is certain, is at the very least responsible for having destroyed Russian-German relations.

Ukraine? Merkel wants to take control of the country to continue the Germans' "Lebensraum" policy of expansion during World War II. And if you find yourself thinking of Hitler, that's just what the television host wants. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, he said that Merkel had aged considerably, was no longer "politically fashionable" and embodied Europe's past, not its future. And, Kiselyov insists, now that she has packed the country full of refugees from North Africa and the Middle East, Germany finds itself at a dead end. And not just Germany, but all of Europe!

 One could be forgiven for discounting the show as a bizarre niche program, but Kiselyov is the most powerful journalist in Russia (and the only journalist on the EU sanctions list) and he heads up Rossiya Segodnya, the globally active state media empire. His "News of the Week" program is broadcast during a prime-time slot on one of the most important state broadcasters. Every Sunday, several million viewers tune in to watch Kiselyov explain the world.

Merkel Has Kissed Satan

When the public opinion institute Levada Center polled Russians a year ago about their attitudes toward a number of world leaders, few respondents saw Merkel in a completely positive light. And fully two-thirds of respondents had a negative view of the German chancellor, ahead of only Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, then-U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who became Russia's archenemy overnight after the Turkish military shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border in late 2015. As a Russian blog would have it, Merkel has forfeited her enormous popularity due to the "overthrow in Ukraine" and the "migrant crisis." She is, the blog noted, "Germany's assassin." This summer, after the German parliament voted to allow same-sex marriages in the country, the homophobic Russian politician Vitaly Milonov said that Merkel had kissed Satan.

Russians are worried about Germany and Europe, but the attention on Angela Merkel has waned this year. It appears it's not just the Germans who are bored with this year's campaign, but also the Russians. Russian state television only rarely touches on the campaign, usually only doing so when there are images of crowds booing the chancellor during a stump speech or of demonstrators holding up signs reading, "Merkel Must Go!" But the Russians too have no illusions about Merkel's ultimate victory. They are more concerned with who her government coalition partner will be. That, in fact, is consistent with the extensive coverage former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, of the center-left Social Democrats, is receiving due to his nomination as chairman of the supervisory board at Rosneft.

From the perspective of Russia's ruling class, Merkel stands for the sanctions and the ongoing crisis in Russian-German relations (while Schröder represents the excellent relations that existed during his tenure). Life would be easier without this chancellor, they believe, but it's the Americans' fault anyway. In reality, Kiselyov will occasionally admit, it's not really Merkel's fault that she is such a nightmare for Russia. After all, he argues, she is little more than an American puppet.

By Alice Bota in Moscow