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The Russian war against Ukraine also means a "turn for internal security", said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, when she presented the constitutional defense report in June 2022. As a supporter of Ukraine, Germany has been particularly targeted by the Russian secret services. Faeser again recently drew attention to disinformation campaigns, cyber attacks and espionage by foreign secret services.
The reason for this was the arrest on Wednesday (9.08.2023) in Koblenz of Thomas H. The federal prosecution accuses the German officer of having served the Russian authorities. He is accused of betraying the Russians by passing information about materials and weapons of the German Army. According to the "Tagesspiegel" newspaper, the defendant had caught the eye of domestic circles because of his sympathy for the partially extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, as well as for Russian politics.
A double agent in the Federal Intelligence Service (BND)?
At the end of 2022, a similar case attracted attention. Carsten L. was a sector director in the BND service responsible for "personnel security" - but he had turned himself into a great danger. The former Bundeswehr officer is accused, as a double agent, of working for the Russian FSB secret service, being particularly interested in data on the positions of air defense aviation, which Western countries have provided to Ukraine. But in fact Carsten L. did not have access to such information. He was arrested on 21.12.2022. He and another person involved are being investigated for treason against the country.
The Anschlag family listens to shortwave
But there have been cases of espionage from Germany in Moscow for a long time, not only now with the war in Ukraine. The couple of Russian agents named Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag for decades presented themselves as a couple with ordinary lives: he as an engineer and she as a housewife. But in fact, both of them have been active as agents for Moscow since the late 1980s.
They spied first for the Soviets and then for the Russian secret service, bringing them information from Germany about NATO and the European Union. They received orders in coded messages via shortwave – back then espionage was not yet a digital business. In the fall of 2011 they were discovered - thanks to information from the US Secret Service. In 2013, both were sentenced to many years in prison and then deported to Russia.
There were about 12,000 agents during the cold war in West Germany, who were in the service of the Stasi (State Security in the GDR). One of them was Gabriele Gast, who was discovered after the dissolution of the GDR in East Germany and the reunification of Germany.
Gabriele Gast was from West Germany and in 1968 during a research trip for her dissertation topic "The Role of Women in the GDR" she was recruited by a Stas officer in East Germany. Under a false name, she made a career in the information service, BND in FRG. It is considered the main spy of the GDR in the West./DW
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