FGS FGS Hamburg F220, from the German navy, in the port of Wilhelmshaven, northern Germany, on July 12, 2025. Photo: FOCKE STRANGMANN / AFP / Profimedia
Russia's attempts to destabilize German society have increased significantly this year, warned the head of German military counter -information, writes political Monday.
“We are talking about a sudden increase in espionage cases and hybrid measures,” said Martina Rosenberg, in an interview for the German press agency DPA. “The approach (Russia) is massive and more aggressive,” she added.
The number of cases in which Russia's involvement is suspected was doubled in the first half of this year, DPA noted in the interview with Rosenberg, which is the president of Militärische Abschirmdienst (German military counter -information service).
“It is no secret: as a logistics center for NATO troops movements and as an active partner of NATO, Germany is always in the viewfinder of foreign intelligence services,” added Rosenberg, her words echoing those of last year's secret Estonian services.
Most recently, the German navy has found sabotage operations on board the ships: broken cables, oil in the water tank or metal shrapnel in the transmission system.
Even before the widespread invasion of Ukraine by Moscow in February 2022, Russian secret operations were held in Germany. For example, in 2021, a German court expelled two Russian diplomats for killing a Georgian citizen.
Russian secret services find online recruits, who are often not aware of the ultimate goal, as was the case of the Ukrainian teenager who put an explosion in an IKEA store in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in March 2024.
