Germany expels Russian diplomat suspected of espionage
An employee of the Russian consulate in Munich was declared persona non grata after he was accused of espionage, reports Deutsche Welle.
According to Deutsche Welle, the diplomat was an officer of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and acted as a liaison agent with a Russian academician, whose arrest on charges of espionage was announced the day before.
Deutsche Welle reports that the expulsion occurred shortly after the detention in the summer of 2021 of Ilnur N., a researcher from the University of Augsburg, whom the German Prosecutor's Office suspects of transferring to the Russian Military Intelligence information about the European space launch vehicle Ariane.
According to the case file, 29-year-old Ilnur N. worked as a researcher at the Department of Natural History at one of the universities in Germany. The prosecutor's office did not say in which university the accused worked, however, according to the dpa agency, it was the University of Augsburg.
According to the investigation, from October 2020 to June 2021, Ilnur N. met at least three times with a representative of one of the Russian special services. During at least two of these meetings, in exchange for a monetary reward, he provided Russian intelligence with official information relating to his work at the university. He has been charged with espionage and faces up to five years in prison.