One of the aid measures for Ukraine implemented by the German government is the reception and training of Ukrainian soldiers, who in their territory are trained to use more modern and sophisticated weapons than the Soviet one that their army had been counting on. The military counterintelligence service has evidence that Russia has been spying these trainings in german bases, which began shortly after the invasion, using drones. According to a report to which the weekly ‘Der Spiegel’ has had access, the Military Protection Service (MAD) detected suspicious vehicles shortly after the start of the courses for Ukrainian soldiers in the vicinity of the Idar-Oberstein military sites, in the Rhineland -Palatinate, and Grafenwoehr, in Bavaria, from where the access roads start.
In Idar-Oberstein, the Bundeswehr trains Ukrainian soldiers in the use of the Panzerhaubitze 2000, while in Grafenwoehr the US military trains Ukrainians in Western artillery systems. According to the military intelligence service, the training areas were flown over several times with small drones to observe the activity and it is suspected in security circles that the Russian services could also have tried to access the mobile phone data of the Ukrainian soldiers with radio scanners.
The same report notes that opposition members who fled from Russia to Germany are at potential risk and that they could be the target of the Russian secret services. The same applies to defecting Russian soldiers and security agents who might flee to Germany as the war progresses.
German counter espionage
German authorities are aware that Vladimir Putin’s espionage empire is waging a shadow war against the West with tens of thousands of employees. “Spies influence parties, manipulate elections, control Telegram channels and foment protests in the West with false information,” explain Foreign Ministry sources, adding that there is evidence that they infiltrate the computer networks of Western governments and hack highly sensitive systems. A team from ‘Der Spiegel’, in cooperation with the investigative platforms Bellingcat and ‘The Insider’, has recently uncovered agent Adela K.which was last operating in Italy and possibly spied on NATO and US Navy employees there.
German counterintelligence has an overview of how Putin’s spies operate. The Russian foreign intelligence service SWR commands around 3,000 agents, and the military intelligence service GRU another 1,000, many of them disguised as diplomats. addition cup to 70 “illegal” circulateie spies operating under elaborate camouflage identities and dealing with extremely complex missions and attacks that are particularly difficult to detect. Then there is “Unit 29 155,” Putin’s assassination team, a top-secret elite unit specializing in the commission of political assassinations.
German authorities are aware that public infrastructure can relatively easily become a target or collateral damage for these attackers. For example, on February 24 this year, the beginning of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the Russian services tried disconnect the ukrainian army and its mobile networks, and as a consequence the connection between 5,800 German wind turbines and its headquarters failed because the operating companies were customers of the same US provider.
www.abc.es
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism