The 65-year-old faces as much as 10 years in jail for allegedly spying for the Russian international intelligence service.
A reserve officer of the German Armed Forces has been placed on trial for allegedly passing delicate data to the Russian international intelligence service GRU between 2014 and 2020.
The 65-year-old is on trial on the Dusseldorf Greater Regional Courtroom, and if convicted, he might withstand 10 years in jail.
Based on the indictment, the person from Erkrath close to Dusseldorf betrayed data on the internal workings of the Bundeswehr’s reserve system and on civilian-military cooperation in disaster conditions.
The data can also be mentioned to concern the consequences of the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea and the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline, a venture that was halted following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Based on the indictment, the paperwork and data got here partly from public sources but in addition from private sources.
As a motive, the Federal Prosecutor’s Workplace suspects “sympathy for the Russian Federation”. They haven’t been in a position to set up any financial funds.
The defendant had attracted consideration as a result of he had been invited to official occasions by Russian authorities.
He had already made a partial confession throughout the preliminary proceedings, a courtroom spokeswoman mentioned.
In June, the Dutch intelligence service uncovered a Russian army agent making an attempt to make use of a false identification as an intern to infiltrate the Worldwide Felony Courtroom (ICC) which is investigating accusations of battle crimes in Ukraine.