On various days in the last two weeks, German police have arrested six people suspected of spying for Russia or China in different cities, a rate of arrests that has raised alarm in Germany. The table shows the growing penetration of Russian and Chinese espionage in the country, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the secret services of the Ministry of the Interior, links to the war in Ukraine in the Russian case and to economic interests in the Chinese, and in both cases to a foreign offensive with the desire to destabilize Western democracies.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described the series of arrests as a success. “We are protecting ourselves against hybrid threats from the Russian regime, but also against espionage from China,” she said. “We have to finally understand that this is a very serious and very real threat to our security; “We must act quickly and decisively both through criminal prosecution and by uncovering structures and networks,” said this week the environmentalist deputy Konstantin von Notz, president of the parliamentary control commission in the Bundestag (lower house of Parliament) in charge of security services. intelligence.
The succession of events has almost cinematic overtones. On Wednesday, April 17, two men with German and Russian nationality were arrested in Bayreuth (Bavaria), suspected of spying to commit acts of sabotage with explosives against industries and military installations – including a US base in this country – with the aim of “undermining the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression,” according to the Prosecutor General’s Office. Also in its sights was the American base of Grafenwöhr, in Bavaria, where Ukrainian soldiers receive training in the operation of American Abrams battle tanks.
And this week, BfV investigations against espionage have led to four arrests linked to China. Three people – two are husband and wife – were arrested in Düsseldorf and Bad Homburg. The couple was snooping around in the fields of science and research, while the third detainee worked for a Chinese agent and “collected for him in Germany information about innovative technologies that can be used for military purposes,” says the Attorney General’s Office.
But the most notable arrest, due to its impact on national politics, has been that of an assistant to the far-right MEP Maximilian Krah for spying for China. The detainee is accused of “having transmitted on several occasions in January 2024 information about the negotiations and decisions of the European Parliament to his intelligence service client”, that is, China, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, which, as can be seen, cannot cope with the task of sending communications about espionage to the press.
Germany is becoming a nest of spies, as it was during the Cold War, when Berlin as a divided city was teeming with foreign agents. “Espionage is on the rise; “We already saw an increase in Russian intelligence activities after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and now that we have a ‘hot’ war in Ukraine, espionage has become even more important,” says Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, president of the Institute of Peace Policy Research, in Weilheim (Bavaria), and expert in secret services.
“The Russians want to know about the operational capacity of the German armed forces, and what weapons can be sent to Ukraine, but they also do political espionage, because Germany is an important country in decision-making within the EU, and economically, because “The Russians are looking for loopholes in the sanctions regime,” says Schmidt-Eenboom.
Shortly after the start of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Germany expelled 40 suspected spies linked to the Russian embassy in Berlin. However, it is estimated that Russia has since compensated for these losses with new signings.
Chinese espionage is more related to the economy and China’s search for its place in the world. According to the BfV’s 2023 annual report, “China’s global ambitions aim to gain more power to shape its own organizational and leadership claim, and can be expected to lead to a further intensification of espionage activities.” Thomas Haldenwang, president of the BfV, was even more specific at a symposium in Berlin: “China wants to be the world’s leading political, military and economic power in 2049; pursues that objective continually, by legal means, but also by illegal means.”
Beijing often uses Chinese students and academics at German universities, who cooperate willingly or because they have no choice. The network of Confucius institutes, in theory an institution for the promotion of Chinese culture, also arouses suspicion and the Minister of Education, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, warned about it months ago.
But the economic sphere is the weakest flank, since Germany fears the competition from China (overwhelming and which the Government calls unfair), but wants its market. This week, the German secret services called on companies to abandon “the very naive and highly optimistic attitude” in their business with China, to avoid industrial espionage. “We cannot accept that they spy on us, no matter which country they come from,” said the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. The German secret services have already announced that they will hire more personnel.
