A white Ilyushin landed at Berlin Airport on Saturday Il-96-300. The machine with the registration RA-96014 may only fly into the airspace of the EU with a special permit. It is a Russian government plane. The aircraft had a so-called diplomatic clearance, a spokesman for the Air Force told the German Press Agency on Saturday. The purpose of the flight: to bring members of the Russian embassy in Berlin back to Moscow.
According to information from Süddeutsche Zeitung A low double-digit number of Russian diplomats left the country on Saturday afternoon and flew back to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. However, the Foreign Office rejected the statement by the Foreign Ministry in Moscow that the diplomats had been expelled from Germany.
“In fact, over the past few weeks, the federal government has been holding talks with the Russian side about their presence at the respective diplomatic missions abroad, with the aim of reducing the Russian intelligence service presence in Germany,” the Foreign Office said. “Today’s departure of Russian embassy staff is related to this.”
Secret service agents disguised as diplomats
The spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, Maria Zakharova, had previously stated that Russia would expel 20 German diplomats and was thus reacting to a corresponding measure by the federal government. She spoke of “further mass expulsions of employees of Russian diplomatic missions in Germany”.
The State Department said it condemned the move “strongly.” The “entire range of Russian-German relations” will be “defiantly destroyed”. Russia had decided to react accordingly to “Berlin’s hostile actions”. The upper limit for employees in German diplomatic missions in Russia will also be significantly limited.
The background to this is that, according to the findings of the German security authorities, employees of Russian secret services disguised as diplomats are spying out of the embassy and carrying out other secret service activities. They are officially accredited as diplomats. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution sends the Federal Foreign Office lists of embassy employees who must be assumed to fall into this category.
Anti-espionage blinds
In the most recent wave of expulsions in April 2022, the list of security authorities was longer than the names of people whom Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock finally had declared undesirable. The authorities have not officially said how many agents are still believed to be in Moscow’s diplomatic missions in this country.
Any magnitude could give the enemy an indication of how much the Germans know – you don’t want to risk that. However, the Federal Foreign Office is preparing to operate the German embassy in Moscow with only a skeleton staff. It is also still unclear whether the ambassador-designate Alexander Graf Lambsdorff will receive the approval of the Russian government, which is still outstanding; he is to replace the previous ambassador Géza von Geyr in the summer.
In any case, Department 4 of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is responsible for counterintelligence, has not been underemployed since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent attack on Ukraine. President Thomas Haldenwang has repeatedly emphasized that Berlin is the capital of spies, especially since February 24, 2022.
His intelligence officials have also warned members of the Bundestag, who have their offices across the street at Otto-Wels-Haus – Unter den Linden 50, directly across from the Russian embassy. The Mirror already wrote about the “wing of the extradited”. They should draw their blinds when a visitor potentially interesting for Russia arrives. Bluetooth headphones, wireless keyboards and mice are taboo because the data can be easily fished out.
China worries the Office for the Protection of the Constitution
There are also constitutional protection officers driving around to teach members of parliament in state parliaments or employees in critical companies the basics of counter-espionage: Extreme caution when strangers approach you in the pub in the evening. On business trips abroad, always consider that a casual acquaintance can also be an attempt to initiate. Think carefully about which public WLAN you dial into with your work cell phone. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution also regularly trains its employees, and the Federal Office also has a hotline that officials can use to anonymously report possible contact or spying attempts by external services.
In general optimism, many state offices for the protection of the constitution reduced their counter-espionage departments after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In some offices there were only two people working, who mainly took care of economic protection. Some state offices are now increasing their anti-espionage teams again. By the way, not only because of Russia. In the long term, it has been heard that China should cause much greater concern in this area.