Left-Extremist Endeavours

Unchanged presence of
large numbers of Russian
intelligence service staff in
Germany
4. Legal Residencies of Russian Intelligence Services
As established by the counterintelligence agencies, the Russian
intelligence services continue to use the official and quasi-official
missions of their country in Germany as intelligence footholds
(legal residencies). Large numbers of intelligence staff are employed
on cover posts at these government offices of Russia on
German territory. For the major part, they have diplomatic status
and thus enjoy special rights, especially diplomatic immunity.
Although a markedly larger number of intelligence service personnel
have been assigned to legal residencies in Germany than
to most other European countries, the Russian side endeavours
to dispatch additional intelligence service officers to their diplomatic
representations in Germany and in this way attempts to
provide for even greater augmentation of the already existing
legal residencies. The high percentage of cover positions at the
Russian diplomatic representations in Germany underlines both
the importance attached to legal residencies in the intelligence
concept of Russian secret services and the significance of Germany
as a target country.
Embassy’s move to Berlin Parts of the Russian Embassy moved from Bonn to Berlin
already in the course of 1999 and were co-located there with its
previous Berlin field office to form the new Russian Embassy
(RE). However, with the establishment of a Russian Consulate-
General (RCG), Bonn continues to be a diplomatic site.
Cover posts give access to
target persons
Thanks to their supposed (official) functions, the legal residents
serving with Russian diplomatic representations enjoy excellent
conditions which enable them to perform their intelligence tasks
or greatly facilitate performance of such tasks. Their diplomatic
status and cover positions provide them with many and various
opportunities for getting to know target persons of intelligence
interest from all priority subject areas as well as representatives
of public authorities, journalists or diplomats from other countries.
Without arousing any suspicion, these residency members can
then, through open conversations, elicit information from their
(unwitting) contact persons on their professional scope for
obtaining access and on their private backgrounds. In this way,
intelligence service officers who give their interlocutors the wrong
impression of having a mere exchange of views, will receive firsthand
information, e.g. on development trends in industry or in the
research and technology sectors and on opinion-forming
processes in the fields of politics and security policy. Findings of
intelligence relevance can then be selected from the overall
information thus obtained.
�����