European governments and spy-catchers have grown more and more involved about an uptick of espionage within the bloc since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. From France to Bulgaria, Russian snoops, typically working beneath diplomatic cowl, have been expelled en masse.
Final week, the overseas ministers of eight EU international locations wrote to the bloc’s prime diplomat asking that Russian diplomats and their households be restricted from shifting freely in a bid to “considerably slim operational area for Russian brokers.”
NATO Secretary-Basic Jens Stoltenberg additionally pledged to crack down on Russian spies, together with imposing “tighter restrictions on Russian intelligence personnel throughout the alliance.”
The arrests in Frankfurt come days after Estonia sentenced a Russian college professor to 6 years imprisonment for spying for the Kremlin.
