A German intelligence agent accused of leaking state secrets to Russia has been tasked with finding out the location of HIMARS rocket launchers in Ukraine, German news website Der Spiegel recently reported.
Carsten Linke, a senior German intelligence agent, was hired by the Russian FSB spy service last fall to provide precise information on the location of the HIMARS and Iris-T missile systems that the US and Germany had supplied to Ukraine.
According to reports, German authorities have doubts that Mr Linke was able to send the information to Moscow.
But the alleged spy managed to elicit information about top-secret communications technology from the German foreign intelligence agency BND. In return, the Russian FSB most likely paid the suspected German spy in cash.
According to the German report, investigators discovered an envelope with a six-figure euro amount in a locker that belonged to him.
The 52-year-old Senior Agent Linke was arrested by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shortly before Christmas. Since the public prosecutor’s office named him as a source for leaking top secret information to Moscow, he is currently being investigated on suspicion of high treason.
A second suspect, Arthur Eller, was arrested in January and charged with involvement in treason for allegedly helping Carsten L. pass the information to Russia. Eller was not an employee of the German secret service.
The situation in Ukraine has increased fears of Russian cyber attacks and attempts to sabotage vital infrastructure in Germany.
Image file: HIMARS
Efforts in Europe to dismantle the Russian spy network
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, US and European intelligence agencies have attempted to destabilize Russian spy networks. The German investigation came after roll-ups of suspected Russian agents in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Poland and Slovenia.
Russian spy services have suffered more damage over the past year than at any time since the end of the Cold War, according to US and European security officials who fear the country still has significant capabilities.
Russia’s ability to conduct influence operations in Europe, to maintain contact with whistleblowers, or to provide the Kremlin with information on important matters, such as the extent to which Western leaders are willing to further increase arms sales to Ukraine, seems through the campaign to have been hampered size.
If true, the repercussions could add to the number of repercussions that Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer in East Germany, failed to foresee when he gave the order to invade Ukraine.
The German case has heightened concerns about unresolved security issues in Europe by showing that even during the post-Ukraine crackdown, Moscow continued to regularly receive sensitive documents from one of Europe’s top intelligence agencies, Germany’s BND.
Berlin has downplayed the impact in talks with allied services, but security sources claimed the suspected mole had access to extremely sensitive information.
Germany only found out about the infiltration through a service of Western allies, whose names the BND authorities did not want to give. After Linke found out through a joint action in September that Russian secret services had procured sensitive BND material, he became the target of a mole hunt.
Reports suggest that the seriousness of the breach prompted the governments of the United States, Britain and other nations to scale back intelligence exchanges with Berlin.
According to sources in German media, Linke and Eller first met at a social event in 2021.
The possibility that Linke may have been driven by radical political beliefs is raised by reports the pair were introduced by a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Ground-based air defense system IRIS-T SLM
While the German case revolved around a European suspected of betraying his homeland for the Kremlin, some cases involved Russian citizens attempting to smuggle themselves into the West.
In June 2022, Dutch authorities claimed they stopped a Russian spy from breaking into the International Criminal Court by disguising him as a Brazilian intern.
According to officials and court documents, he was Sergey Cherkasov, a Russian military officer who had been deployed abroad by Russia’s main military intelligence agency, the GRU spy agency, more than a decade earlier.
Cherkasov was turned away by the Netherlands and is currently in prison in Brazil after being convicted of forgery. Although Russia denies he was a spy, it has asked Brazil to extradite him because he is a wanted drug criminal.