BERLIN - Every day, as he settles into his office, Erhard Grundl, a German lawmaker, looks out his office window at the embassy he knows may be spying on him.
"I walk into the office and, on a windy day, I see the Russian flag waving. It reminds me a bit of Psalm 23: 'You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,'" he chuckles.
"I'm not religious, but I always think about it."
A covert cameraman of David Smith recording video from CCTV monitors at the security kiosk of the British embassy in Berlin in 2021. (Metropolitan Police, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images)
In the shadow of the glass dome of Berlin's Reichstag, beyond the sandstone columns of the
Brandenburg Gate,
the German parliamentary buildings sit side by side with the sprawling Stalinist-style Russian diplomatic mission.
For years, the iconic Unter den Linden avenue has been the scene of a silent spy fight.
The intelligence services warned deputies like Grundl that they had to protect themselves:
move computer screens away from windows, stop using easier-to-prick
wireless devices
, and close window blinds during meetings.
It seems an almost comical situation for officials in one of Europe's most powerful nations, where tensions over Russian espionage were something the German government seemed willing to ignore for a long time.
Forensic experts collecting evidence at a crime scene in 2019. A Georgian dissident was shot dead by a gunman accused of having ties to Russian intelligence in broad daylight in Kleiner Tiergarten park.
Photo Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
That has become increasingly difficult since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as a Cold War-style chill settles on 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 the expulsion of more than 20 German diplomats from Moscow.
It was a rare sign of a moderate but growing counterintelligence effort that Berlin is now embarking on belatedly, according to security analysts, after years of increasingly brazen Russian intelligence operations on German soil, security analysts said.
On at least two occasions, Russian groups suspected of having ties to the Kremlin have hacked German politicians and parliament, the last time just months before the 2021 election that ended Angela Merkel's 16-year
rule
. and they gave entrance to the chancellor
Olaf Scholz.
A few years earlier, a gunman accused of ties to Russian intelligence fatally shot a Georgian dissident in broad daylight in the leafy Kleiner Tiergarten park, less than a kilometer from Berlin's government district.
In 2021, police detained 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 agent was exposed as a
mole
passing war surveillance from Ukraine to Moscow.
The German Foreign Office has remained tight-lipped about the latest expulsions, even refusing to call them such.
But he acknowledged that the departure of the diplomats was linked to "reducing the presence of Russian intelligence in Germany."
Expulsions have long been a common German response to Russian operations - including the first parliamentary hack, in 2015, and the invasion of Ukraine, when 40 diplomats were sent back to Moscow.
But security experts see the current move as part of a broader effort to beef up counterintelligence
and
quietly reduce what they have long warned was an
extremely high number
of spies at the embassy.
However, analysts such as Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations say that years of neglect by counterintelligence will take a long time to repair.
When he worked with the German spy agencies in 2000, he recalled, they didn't have a single Russian on staff.
By contrast, Russian President
Vladimir Putin
has long made Germany, Europe's largest economy, a top spy target.
"We are not where we should be, or where we should have been," he said.
"The Russians are also learning. They have no limits, they dedicate a lot of resources to this hybrid war, the information war. And we are always a few steps behind."
"Eventually, these guys get kicked out," he added.
"But why have they taken so long?"
At the center of the debate over Germany's management of Russian espionage is the Russian embassy, a palace complex of tall stone towers etched with Soviet hammers and sickles.
It has long been the subject of fascination, dismay, and intrigue.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, even for years after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, the embassy was famous for lavish
parties
that drew top executives from the German auto industry, politicians, soccer stars and actors.
But he had a darker side:
Two of its inhabitants mysteriously died when they fell from the embassy windows.
In 2021, a diplomat was found on the sidewalk by German police, who believed him to be an undercover agent for the FSB, the branch of Russian secret services that Western officials linked to the Tiergarten murder.
It's an open secret that most diplomatic missions harbor spies among their ranks, and for years,
a former top adviser to Merkel told
The New York Times
, she and her aides who visited the embassy traded guesses about how many worked there. at the embassy, sometimes suggesting
up to 600
.
In a recent documentary for ARD, the country's state broadcaster, the embassy staff estimate before the war was said to be more than 500 people.
German officials used to assume that
at least a third
of them were spies, according to the former Merkel adviser.
Germany's national intelligence agency told ARD it found a possible spy team on the embassy roof, perhaps to spy on lawmakers across the street, such as Grundl, or Frank Schwabe of Scholz's Social Democrats.
"We are not sufficiently prepared," said Schwabe, who works in the building across the street from the embassy and works on human rights.
"In fact, I would like to see a specific security strategy in Germany that really
empowers
members of parliament, to help them really arm themselves against these kinds of wiretapping attempts."
For now, it offers visitors, such as Russian dissidents or civil society actors, the option of moving to another room, or positioning themselves so that they cannot read their lips.
Security experts say these tips aren't enough to help politicians, who appear to be a prime target, not just near the embassy, but anywhere, using vans with smaller devices that can tap phones and listen in on conversations. .
Meister said lawmakers with sensitive portfolios could be moved further from the Russian embassy.
"Then again, what isn't sentient now?
An internal policy or other issues, such as migration, could be used by the Russian side - there is almost nothing that is not sensitive at the moment."
In fact, Nico Lange, a former German Defense Ministry official who is now a senior fellow at the Munich Security Conference, said that issues like migration were a key issue used by Russia to identify and recruit frustrated members and sympathizers of far right of the German security and defense forces - like the mole arrested last year, or the security guard who stole information from the
British embassy.
The country's federalized system complicates Germany's efforts to effectively combat Russian intelligence:
Each German state has a different intelligence service.
Lange acknowledged that cooperation and data sharing between the services was improving, but said the setup inevitably has loopholes.
He also urged lawmakers to repeal laws that grant spy targets, even abroad, the same constitutional rights as German citizens.
"Intelligence agencies are a tit-for-tat business," he said.
"If you're not able to collect information, your partners won't trade with you."
Lange's current concern is that Russian spies are looking for information on weapons or training for Ukrainian soldiers.
Suspected Russian operatives have already been found near military training centers in Germany.
Last month, Poland said it had uncovered a Russian spy ring that had
hidden cameras
on railway lines in the southeast of the country, one of the main transit routes for arms shipments to Ukraine.
But some German lawmakers wonder if concern about Russian spies has strayed too far from an internal issue:
Members of the
far-right
Alternative for Germany party, whose leaders were frequent guests of the Russian embassy, hold seats on some of the biggest parliamentary committees, from Foreign Affairs to Defense.
Grundl was concerned by the fact that, just last week, these far-right colleagues sat in a parliamentary committee while a secret issue was being discussed.
"They're sitting there, and they have the best connections to Moscow," he grumbled.
"That's the biggest headache for me: the enemy within."
c.2023 The New York Times Company
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