Germany arrests Bundeswehr employee for alleged Russian espionage

German criminal police arrested a Bundeswehr employee on suspicion of spying for Russia in Koblenz, western Germany.

“The man is strongly suspected of having worked for a foreign intelligence service and is now in custody. His apartment and workplace were also searched,” Politico reports, citing the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.

He allegedly contacted the Russian consulate in Bonn and the Russian embassy in Berlin “on his own initiative” several times from May of this year, offering to cooperate with them, authorities said. In doing so, he is said to have passed on information from his professional activities to be forwarded to Russian intelligence services.

The arrested man is a German citizen named Thomas H., an employee of the Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Utilization for the Bundeswehr, or German armed forces. Understood to be a sensitive role, the purpose of the position is to equip the German army with efficient and safe defence technology.

German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann thanked security authorities on Twitter and wrote that the arrested man is an officer.

“Vigilance remains the order of the day,” he stated.

The Office said this is not the first case of suspected Russian espionage among security-related German authorities. Last December, an employee of the German foreign intelligence service was arrested and accused of having passed on state secrets to a Russian intelligence service.

A month earlier, a Bundeswehr reserve officer was sentenced to probation for providing information to the Russian military intelligence service for years.