Germany summons Russian ambassador over cyberattack, disinformation
Germany has summoned the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Office in Berlin, a ministry spokesman said on Friday, citing a major cyberattack and a disinformation operation surrounding the German election campaign.
A cyberattack on German air-traffic control in August 2024 could clearly be attributed to a Russian hacker group called Fancy Bear, the spokesman said.
"Our intelligence findings prove that the Russian military intelligence service GRU is responsible for this attack," he said.
He said Russia certainly attempted to "influence and destabilize both the last federal election and the internal affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany on an ongoing basis" through the so-called "Storm 1516" campaign.
There is reliable information that organizations supported by the GRU intelligence service are behind this, he said.
The Storm 1516 campaign has been running since 2024 and is primarily aimed at influencing Western elections.
Before Germany's parliamentary election on February 23, the focus was, among others, on the Green Party's lead candidate Robert Habeck and the conservative candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who went on to win the vote.
Two days before the election, the government announced that German security authorities had evidence that fake videos about alleged ballot rigging were part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The spokesman for the Foreign Office said that Russia's actions specifically threaten Germany's security, "not only through its war of aggression against Ukraine but also here in Germany."
He added that the German government, in coordination with European partners, "will take a series of countermeasures to show Russia a price for its hybrid actions."
The German government has observed an increase in hybrid threats from Russia for some time. Hybrid warfare is understood as a combination of military, economic, intelligence and propaganda tools, which can also influence public opinion, including state-directed cyberattacks.