Exclusive
Status: 11/15/2022 3:27 p.m
In the Bundeswehr, a soldier failed a security check. Nevertheless, he was after SWR-Sent research to international observer missions. According to a security expert, there are systemic problems.
Sergei E.’s convictions are clear: Russia, as the 43-year-old sees it, is not waging a war against Ukraine, but against the USA. In the West, the media, as an extended arm of the government, made propaganda against Vladimir Putin. Anyone who has different opinions is dealing with a “repressive system”.
This is how E., who is an AfD member, feels about the research of the SWR to his person. It began after a tip: The Federal Foreign Office had abruptly withdrawn E. from the EU observer mission in Georgia at the end of October. In the country that was invaded and destabilized by Russia in 2008, E., as “operations officer,” was supposed to monitor whether the ceasefire was being observed. The reports of the EU observers should be kept strictly neutral.
EUMM (European Union Monitoring Mission)
The EU mission in Georgia started work on October 1, 2008 with more than 200 unarmed observers. She oversees the implementation of the EU-brokered agreements of August 12 and September 8, 2008 between Russia and Georgia. This included the normalization and stabilization of the situation, especially at the beginning. It is also the task of the EUMM to help build trust between the conflicting parties and to provide objective information. However, Russia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia refuse to allow the mission to patrol the breakaway areas. The first leader of the mission was the German diplomat Hansjörg Haber. Initially, Germany provided 48 employees, and the mission’s budget was 49.6 million euros.
Incomplete and contradictory information
Why did the Federal Republic of Germany send a Putin fan and anti-European to a country invaded by Russia? The employer of the German staff of the EU mission in Georgia is the Center for International Peace Operations (ZIF), which the federal government founded as a non-profit organization at the beginning of the millennium. It is to select and train staff for international missions.
Behind the scenes, the ZIF is contrite: the man is said to have practically slipped through. Officially it says: “At the time of the dispatch, the ZIF was not aware of any statements of this kind. The Federal Foreign Office received the first concrete indications in October 2022 and steps were taken to end its mission in Georgia.”
To SWRThe Federal Ministry of the Interior reported to the ZIF at the end of October and warned that the man from Berlin would not survive the examination process. Sergei’s statements were incomplete and contradictory. In various social media, such as Facebook and the Russian counterpart VKontakte, E. had repeatedly sided with Russia. Eight years ago, E. ironically commented on Russia’s aggression in eastern Ukraine: “The Russian aggressors are so harsh that even the civilian population of the victim state is seeking refuge in the hundreds of thousands with the aggressor.”
Ordered back from Georgia
It is unclear whether E. caused damage at his post in Georgia or passed on internal information. The Federal Foreign Office stated that employees of the EU mission can take up their duties there before their security check has been completed. Until then, they received “restricted access to classified information, namely classified up to ‘EU RESTRICTED’, which in Germany corresponds to ‘VS – Only for official use'”.
E. did not spend much time in Georgia. A few weeks after starting work in the western Georgian city of Zugdidi, the Foreign Office brought him back. It is responsible for checking the German employees.
The EU Commission is tight-lipped. As a matter of principle, individual cases are not commented on, said the spokeswoman for foreign and security policy, Paloma Hall Caballero. However, one could say that there is no evidence that there was a Russian infiltration in the EU mission.
Also in use in eastern Ukraine
It wasn’t his only mission: from 2015 to 2020 he was a “monitoring officer” for the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the crisis war zone in eastern Ukraine. About 14,000 people were killed there before Russia invaded all of Ukraine on February 24.
To SWRinformation, E., who is a trained soldier, switched to the Bundeswehr in July 2020. Even there, a security check failed. Nevertheless, he was able to return to the OSCE in 2021, this time to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. There he remained until the Russian invasion in February. The OSCE aborted its mission at that time.
According to the Foreign Office, no security check was necessary for this mission. Like all German employees of the mission, E. received a diplomatic passport for “operational reasons”. However, he was not accredited as a diplomat.
Expert sees systemic problems
The E. case appalled the SPD member of parliament and interior expert Sebastian Fiedler: “If a highly qualified German soldier with Russian roots, who is in the right-wing extremist and pro-Russian AfD and has a clear Putin sentiment, works for German security authorities or European institutions, that’s it kinda like the police employing a mafia boss.”
The former chairman of the Association of German Criminal Investigators sees systemic problems, since E. did not survive his check with the Bundeswehr: “If the German security authorities have such information, it must of course be shared in such a way that a danger is immediately eliminated and, if necessary, investigations are initiated can become.”
The German and European intelligence services currently have “a particularly responsible role,” says Fiedler. This applies in particular to “defending hostile foreign espionage activities”.
Always adhered to legal formalities
The Eastern Europe expert and Green MEP Viola von Cramon calls for “uniform and transparent security standards” in the cooperation between the EU and its member states so that “no people are sent to sensitive missions where there is a possibility that they are also working for enemy services”.
Sergei E., who lives in Berlin, regards questions about his case as “deeply insulting and a slap in the face”. The “so-called research” aims to “discredit him personally, but presumably also others who doubt the official course of the federal government or even dare to publicly criticize him and degrade them in public opinion”.
The Bundeswehr as well as the ZIF and he himself “always strictly adhered to the legal formalities in terms of personal requirements, conclusion of contracts and assessments”. Everything was legal, which is “inevitably linked to the complexity of our business and the associated professional requirements, which go far beyond the emotional hysteria of people outside of our profession”.