*who our left-leaning politicians*

To be fair, Merkel is an ex-DDR resident. Learning Russian was a valuable skill in a Russian colony.

With that said, I had a joke with a friend where I said that everybody in the 2016 race was a Russian plant. It really didn't help when you had Trump courting Russian money, Jill Stein at a dinner sharing a table with Putin, and Sanders left leaning viewpoints and his awfully grifty campaign staff.