Discreetly, Berlin is finally confronting Moscow’s spies

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has recast relations

BERLIN — Every day as he settles into his desk, Erhard Grundl, a German lawmaker, looks outside his office window into the embassy he knows may be spying on him.

In the shadow of Berlin’s glass-domed Reichstag, beyond the sandstone columns of Brandenburg Gate, German parliamentary buildings sit cheek by jowl with Russia’s sprawling, Stalinist-style diplomatic mission. For years, a silent espionage struggle played out here along the city’s iconic Unter den Linden avenue.

Members of parliament like Grundl were warned by intelligence offices to protect themselves — to turn computer screens away from the window, stop using wireless devices that were easier to tap, and close the window blinds for meetings.

It seems an almost comical situation for officials in one of Europe’s most powerful nations, where tensions over Russian espionage were something Germany’s government long seemed willing to ignore. That has become increasingly difficult since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as a Cold War-era style chill settles across the continent and recasts relations with Russia.

Late last month, Russia exposed what it described as a “mass expulsion” of its diplomats in Germany when it announced a tit-for-tat expulsion of more than 20 German diplomats from Moscow. It was a rare sign, security analysts say, of a subdued but growing counterintelligence effort that Berlin is now belatedly undertaking, after years of increasingly brazen Russian intelligence operations on German soil.

At least twice, Russian groups suspected of Kremlin links have hacked German politicians and parliament — the last time just months before the 2021 elections that ended Angela Merkel’s 16 years at the helm and brought in Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

A few years earlier, a gunman accused of ties to Russian intelligence shot dead a Georgian dissident in broad daylight at the leafy Kleiner Tiergarten park, less than a mile away from Berlin’s government district.

In 2021, police arrested a security guard at the nearby British Embassy who had been spying for Russia.

And late last year, in perhaps the most disturbing case of all, a German intelligence officer was unmasked as a mole passing surveillance of the war in Ukraine to Moscow.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry has been tight-lipped about the latest expulsions — even refusing to call them expulsions. But it acknowledged the diplomats’ departure was linked to “reducing the Russian intelligence presence in Germany.”

Still, analysts like Stefan Meister, of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said years of neglecting counterintelligence would take a long time to repair. When he worked with German spy agencies in 2000, he recalled, they did not have a single Russian speaker on staff. In contrast, he said, President Vladimir Putin of Russia had long made Germany, Europe’s largest economy, a top target for espionage.

At the heart of the debate over Germany’s handling of Russian espionage is the Russian Embassy, a palatial complex of stone towers engraved with Soviet hammers and sickles that has long been a site of intrigue.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency told ARD, the country’s state broadcaster, that it found potential espionage equipment on the embassy roof — perhaps to spy on lawmakers across the street, like Grundl.