Agency Report –
Russian intelligence services are increasingly targeting German academic organizations focused on Eastern Europe, according to the head of the Academic Network Eastern Europe (AKNO), Philipp Schmädeke.
This marks a shift, as such operations mostly affected exiled opposition figures and journalists before 2021, not scientists and their organizations, Schmädeke told dpa.
He added that one of AKNO’s partner organizations had been broken into three times and the Berlin-based network itself had successfully repelled two cyberattacks, as they anticipated such threats. While difficult to prove, Schmädeke believes Russian services are behind these efforts.
AKNO, which has supported 1,200 people from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine over the past four years, helps scientists forced to flee repression, persecution, employment bans and war.
Since December 2023, AKNO has been named an “undesirable foreign organization” in Russia, banning it from operating there.
Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security and the domestic intelligence agency are currently looking into a cyberattack on the German Association for East European Studies, presumably directed from Russia, that was made public at the end of March.
