The EU held elections for the European Parliament in early June 2024. After the elections, Peter Pavel, the President of the Czech Republic and Austria’s neighbour, pointed out that we cannot overlook the increasing support for extremists in Europe. It is necessary to listen to these voices and reflect on why this is happening, with the aim of preventing a shift in the fundamental value direction of the EU regarding security and democracy.
The top three winners from Austria are as follows: The right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) received 25.4% of the votes, the ruling conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) came in second with 24.5% of the votes, and finally, the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) garnered 23.2% of the votes, finishing in third place. It is unlikely that we should expect changes in this picture during national elections. The parties are going “nose to nose,” as they say. But at the same time, almost half of Austrians, like in neighbouring Slovakia, support parties that in neighbouring Germany, where Austria speaks the same language, are referred to as Putinversteher (“understanding Putin”), almost Putins Parteigenossen (Putin party comrades), considering that the FPÖ has partnered with United Russia from the Russian Federation and the Liberal Democratic Party from Belarus. The leader of the race and the bronze medallist support the lifting of sanctions against Russia and the suspension of support for Ukraine.
Why is it possible for a Western country like Austria to become increasingly pro-Russian? This problem didn’t arise yesterday. They just ignored it for a long time.
While certain European countries, particularly Poland and the Baltic states, have begun to perceive Russia under Putin as a strategic threat, Austria, on the other hand, perceived cooperation with Moscow as having only positive potential.
After dividing into sectors occupied by the USSR, the USA, England, and France after World War II, Austria reunified in the mid-1950s and officially declared itself a “neutral” country. Austria’s neutrality, which included legal norms that considered espionage a crime only if it was directed against Austria, transformed her capital into a haven for spies. The fact that Austria hosts various international organisations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, further underscores its neutral status.
Vienna, the capital of a neutral country at the crossroads of East and West, is home to important branches of the United Nations, OPEC, and other international organisations. According to European officials and intelligence agents, Vienna has become a base for Russian covert operations, including funding and logistical support for assassinations, sabotage, and recruitment across Europe, as well as industrial espionage. The legality of espionage in Austria, provided it does not target Austria itself, further facilitates this situation.
After European countries expelled 600 Russian spy diplomats following the start of the war in Ukraine, the process intensified, and over the past two and a half years, the number of Russian government officials in Austria has increased from 300 to more than 500. Of these, about half are diplomats and administrators, while the rest, according to Austrian intelligence estimates, work as intelligence agents. For example, after Germany closed the Russian consulate in Munich, where, according to German officials, several spies were located, Russian staff simply moved to Salzburg, an Austrian city just across the eastern border.
Russians station themselves in nearly 40 buildings in Austria’s capital, installing various surveillance equipment on their rooftops. We suspect Russian operatives based in Vienna of aiding in the recruitment and financing of Russian operations, including the tracking of Western weapons supply to Kyiv in Poland and the assassination of Russian military helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov in Spain, who defected to Ukraine. According to European intelligence agencies, Russian “government officials” from Vienna paid the pilot’s killers in cash. According to an Austrian intelligence service employee, Russia is using motor transport to transfer large amounts of cash to neighbouring countries, such as Lithuania. Subsequently, Russian “diplomats” spies are smuggling the cash across Europe in personal belongings and luggage with diplomatic mail that cannot be inspected or searched by law enforcement agencies.
“Russian intelligence is a vast apparatus, and it has resumed its traditional operations,” note Western officials. Almost every week, there is news about espionage activities in European countries. In turn, “spy scandals” flare up in Austria and neighbouring Germany, just like more than half a century ago. At Vienna airport, they exchange Russian spies for uncovered Western intelligence agents.
Publications around the world report the increasingly effective work of Russian intelligence services in influencing companies in Western countries, including regarding the aid to Ukraine. In January, German experts published information about bots that spread hundreds of thousands of German-language messages daily on network X from 50,000 accounts over the course of one month. On February 12, France uncovered a large network of Russian websites that were spreading disinformation in France, Germany, and Poland.
Journalists noted an improvement in the performance of other Russian special services. Currently, the FSB, SVR, and GRU are actively recruiting Russians who have relocated to Europe. These individuals pose a particularly great threat to Germany, as the number of Russian refugees there has significantly increased following the Baltic states’ sanctions.
Moreover, it is likely that Russian special services are preparing for a war against NATO. Besides the theft of confidential information, there are attempts to worsen relations between the EU and the US, undermine aid to Ukraine, and provoke conflicts among the members of the Alliance. More and more frequently, discussions about direct conflict with the Russian Federation have emerged in NATO countries. For example, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg stated that the Alliance must prepare for a potential decade-long confrontation with Russia, as its aggression could spread to other countries. Furthermore, Bild journalists previously reported on the possibility of war between NATO and Russia, citing classified materials from the Bundeswehr. They specifically stated that hostilities will “inevitably” start in 2025.
The most recent example of Russia’s aggressive resumption of its espionage war with the West is Moscow’s publication of a phone conversation in which senior officers of the German Air Force discussed the deployment of cruise missiles to Ukraine.
France has uncovered a network of 193 websites intended for spreading disinformation ahead of this year’s European elections. The MI5 agency in Britain has uncovered a Russian spy network consisting of six Bulgarian citizens, led by Austrian citizen Jan Marsalek.
According to journalists, this rise in intelligence operations suggests that Russian agents have gained a newfound sense of confidence after the humiliating failures they faced at the beginning of 2022, when Western agencies revealed Moscow’s plans for an invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin placed the top commanders of the FSB under house arrest when the Russian Federation’s invasion faltered due to their gross underestimation of Ukrainian resistance.
Since then, the main Russian intelligence agencies—the military intelligence GRU, the Federal Security Service FSB, and the Foreign Intelligence Service SVR—have updated their intelligence techniques. The priorities remain the same as before the war: to acquire Western secrets, deepen divisions within NATO, and undermine support for Ukraine. But the methods have become more inventive in order to compensate for the destroyed spy networks in Europe and circumvent Russian restrictions. One of the most significant developments in the Kremlin approach is the increased use of indirect agents, who are drawn from various sectors such as politics, business, and organised crime, as well as entire national political parties and even parliamentary groups in the European Parliament. According to the surveyed intelligence analysts and nine official sources, conducting operations remotely using remote workers and newly recruited trusted agents has its advantages and disadvantages for Russian spies. The GRU has begun recruiting “clean personnel,” meaning agents without military experience, who are to discreetly infiltrate target countries and establish personal contacts. Russians are still doing a lot of remote management. But they perceive it as an unreliable method. The present objective is to create legitimate covers or legends that will enable agents to enter “target” countries.
According to journalists, the old model of “legal” Russian spies operating outside of embassies is still in effect in traditionally neutral countries like Austria and Switzerland. In addition, Russian spies have strengthened their bases outside the visa-free Schengen zone of the EU. Turkey and the UAE have become important transit points for Russian intelligence operations in Europe and the Middle East.
The internal intelligence service of Norway described Russia’s new approach in its recent annual report: “We expect that Russia will try to compensate for the loss of intelligence officers by sending more visiting agents.”
Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western intelligence agencies also intensified their cooperation to track down Russian agents. Nevertheless, the Russian intelligence apparatus occasionally obtains remarkable successes, such as the recent information leak from Germany or the SolarWinds cyberattack in 2021, which breached the Pentagon.
The Kremlin took advantage of the mass exodus of opposition-minded citizens from Russia to send professional spies, saboteurs, and assassins to European countries under this cover. Moscow doesn’t even try to pretend that it has no connection to the murders. There is even an article on Wikipedia titled “Suspicious Deaths of Russian Businessmen (2022-2024),” which lists 51 names, and at least some of them have become victims of Russian agents. The Kremlin deliberately left Russia’s borders open, allowing hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee from mobilisation and repression to Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Indeed, new Russian agents were infiltrating Europe alongside these “refugees,” aiming to replace the expelled “diplomats” from Europe in the last two years.
Unfortunately, there is a sad trend of both active and retired officers from intelligence and counterintelligence agencies working for Russian intelligence bodies, or “intelligence committees,” as the Western press refers to them.
In this regard, the scandal surrounding the case of Austrian citizen Jan Marsalek is particularly telling. A financial criminal and Russian spy with a decade of experience served as a consultant to the late Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, and a “money launderer” for Kadyrov.
The case of Jan Marsalek is a complete espionage novel. There is the techno-financial genius of the firm maintaining porn and gaming sites, the involvement of politicians at the level of the Chancellor of Germany, the financing of Russian covert operations, payments to informants or military contractors, secret projects, arms purchases, the acquisition of telecommunications companies and airlines, the theft of $2 billion from accounts, money laundering, an Interpol red notice, and a former Russian porn actress in the service of the Russian GRU, yachts, parties, private jets, a flight into the stratosphere, state secrets, political scandals, bribery of officials and intelligence officers, both former and current, the revival of drowned phones of Austrian politicians, “safari tours” to the war in Syria, the purchase of the cement business in Libya, the organization of a spy network of Bulgarian citizens in Britain, the acquisition of the Russian PMC “RSB-Group” and escape to Russia using documents in the name of an Orthodox priest, the reconfiguration of Prigozhin’s business and restructuring of the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa, and even attempts to personally control the flow of African migrants and even attempt to purchase the Bulgarian airport “Sofia,” five Russian passports, and most importantly – the complete impotence of all intelligence, counterintelligence, operational, and financial services of both Austria and Germany, as well as the entire EU.
In 2018, at the request of Russian intelligence services, Marsalek appointed Martin Weiss as his “advisor.” Weiss had previously served as the head of the Second Department of the BVT, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism of Austria, the primary Austrian secret service, where he was responsible for the collection of information, the conduct of investigations, and the data analytics. Weiss was potentially the most informed intelligence officer in Austria. Weiss’s access ensured that Marsalek received all the intelligence information that BVT collected. It then “drifted” to Moscow, like all the information sent to Vienna by partner agencies such as the CIA, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or the Israeli Mossad.
Marsalek employed yet another BVT veteran, EEgisto Ott. Even when he was an active employee, in 2017, Ott had repeatedly sent data from his official email address at BVT to his personal account. He was suspected of espionage on behalf of Russia, and his immediate superior in BVT at that time was… none other than Martin Weiss. Following his firing, he secured a position in the police force. Despite Ott’s removal from his position, his network of agents continued to function. He used it to gather confidential information about the goals of Weiss and Marsalek. To achieve this, he recruited informants both within the country and abroad. He received money from Martin Weiss, according to the investigation. Despite the seriousness of the charges, his release from custody came just a few weeks later. The police database reveals that Ott carried out over 380 illegal searches.
The day following the publication of the Bellingcat and The Insider investigation in 2020, Weiss and Ott were conducting research on the Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev, which included locating his residence. Then, Jan Marsalek was involved in breaking in at Grozev’s apartment and stealing his laptop. Using the obtained information, Marsalek coordinated the actions of a group of FSB agents known as “Navy SEALs.” This group broke into Christo Grozev’s apartment and stole a laptop and flash drives from there. American intelligence was unaware of this infiltration but had other reasons to believe that Grozev was in danger and recommended that he leave Austria. In 2023, intelligence services informed the investigative journalist that Russia might be planning an assassination attempt on his life, and Grozev left Vienna, where he had lived with his family for 20 years. “It could have been intimidation, surveillance, or murder preparation,” said Christo Grozev. Before his departure, Grozev himself expressed that it’s time for Austria to acknowledge the issue of the growing Russian spy network in the country and to finally augment the counterintelligence staff. Christo Grozev currently lives in the United States.
Additionally, Ott transferred a SINA laptop to Marsalek’s assistants in exchange for 20,000 euros. German intelligence uses this laptop, which has advanced encryption. The police discovered two more such laptops during a search of Ott’s house. Ott assisted Marsalek in transporting the seized classified SINA laptop to Moscow. The authorities of Western countries equip these computers with advanced cryptographic tools and use them to transmit secret information, drawing comparisons to the legendary German Enigma. The authorities report that Lubyanka, or the FSB, received the laptop.
Otto also provided the Russian special services with data recovered from the drowned-in Danube phones of three high-ranking members of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior. “Sent to Moscow for further analysis” was the final message in the correspondence with the accomplice.
Until 2021, the Austrian authorities had not taken any steps to dismantle the Marsalek network and were still unaware of its extent. When investigators recovered details of his escape and discovered that Weiss, with the help of a former FPÖ politician, had arranged a private flight to Minsk, the police arrested the former BVT employee on 22 January that year.
After the espionage scandal erupted, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer convened the National Security Council and stated that “Russian spy networks pose a threat to our country by infiltrating political parties or organizations or exploiting them.”
And he is not the only politician who addresses this matter. Opposition parliament member Stephanie Krisper asserts that a thorough investigation into Russian influence in Austria is necessary. She believes that “for many years, ties with Moscow have permeated our political system.” “Now the economic and political dependence on Russia has finally become a security threat, evident to everyone.”
In an interview, an Austrian intelligence officer stated that Austria is becoming a “problem for our neighbours” due to Russia’s use of the country as an operational base.
Nicholas Stockhammer, an intelligence specialist at the Krems University of Austria, stated: “If the allegations are true, which we are currently assuming, it will have huge implications for the security of Austria, as well as for the security of partner institutions and services that are part of the information chain.” “When information from a friendly intelligence agency is part of a data cluster, it will also have implications for the security of third countries.”
At the same time, the Austrian Ministry of the Interior emphasized that their country is one of the safest because of its effective security structures. The agency’s spokesperson acknowledged the threat Russian spies and influence operations pose. However, the agency is addressing these threats in a manner that aligns with the law.
Perhaps the reader may not fully understand why there is such a detailed description of the actions of Russian intelligence in Austria and what it has to do with its national political parties.
Austrian politicians: Christian Kern was once a member of the board of directors of Russian Railways; another former Chancellor of Austria, Wolfgang Schüssel, was a member of the board of directors of Lukoil; both of them left their positions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and former Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl left her position at Rosneft in May. The real danger lies in the political corruption of the country’s top officials, who promote decisions favourable to Moscow while trading away Austrian national interests. The scandal described above, “Ibizagate,” is a direct surrender of Austria’s interests to the Russian dictator by the leaders of the FPO.
If that’s not enough, it’s worth recalling how on February 28, 2018, at 8 a.m., Commander of the Austrian Police Wolfgang Preissler and dozens of his colleagues, armed with Glocks and battering rams, broke into the building of the domestic intelligence service headquarters, wearing bulletproof vests and balaclavas, seizing confidential data from servers and sensitive documents lying on desks.
These searches, during which the police confronted the intelligence agency known as BVT, sparked a storm of outrage and destroyed Austria’s reputation in the world of intelligence, leading to the agency’s closure. The operation has successfully achieved its genuine objective of neutralizing BVT.
Preysler’s unit, primarily focused on drug trafficking, lacked the necessary preparation for a search involving highly classified information. The police seized 40,000 gigabytes of data during the raid on BVT, including a copy of the “Neptune Databank”—a hard drive containing secret information that other Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, MI5, and Mossad, had been passing on to the Austrians for years. It is unknown whether the Russians managed to make a copy of the disc in the chaos that followed the raid.
The seizure of a top-secret hard drive containing information from partner agencies was catastrophic, even if the spectre of suspicion cast on the Austrian intelligence by this raid could still be endured. In the realm of global intelligence, such carelessness, regardless of the circumstances, is inexcusable. The Austrians abruptly severed their relationship with their companions.
Now, more than six years later, the true scale of what happened that day is just beginning to become clear. New evidence, according to intelligence officials, suggests that Moscow orchestrated the searches as part of an operation to discredit Austrian intelligence services and subsequently reform them under Kremlin-influenced leadership. A key role in this was played by one of the parties in the government coalition at the time—the far-right pro-Russian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which today is the most popular party in the country.
Russian operatives under the supervision of Jan Marsalek, a member of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, initiated this operation, according to Austrian prosecutors.
Moscow has initiated an active effort to infiltrate Austrian security services. Whether these conclusions are based on irrefutable evidence or assumptions remains uncertain. Marsalek was secretly involved in reorganizing the Austrian intelligence services under a single “national coordinator of secret services.”
There are numerous reasons why the information regarding the conspiracy orchestrated by Moscow is causing such a commotion. First of all, it seems that this conspiracy almost succeeded. If it weren’t for the so-called Ibizagate in 2019, when the then-leader of the FPÖ was caught on video trying to sell political influence to a woman he believed was the niece of a Russian oligarch, nothing could have stood in the way of implementing this plan. Instead, the Ibiza scandal led to the government’s collapse, pushing the FPÖ into opposition, where it remains to this day, but as a result of the June voting, it became the leading party in the country.
However, the greatest concern is that the person ultimately responsible for the raid on BVT is the former Minister of the Interior, Herbert Kickl, who now leads the FPÖ. This makes him the leading candidate for the position of Austria’s next Chancellor after the elections at the end of September 2024. Although experienced political analysts insist that Austria will not become a Russian vassal under the leadership of the FPÖ, Chancellor Kickl’s tenure will nonetheless benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin and allow the Kremlin to exert greater influence over the country behind the scenes, mirroring its success in co-opting countries like Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia.
If the FPÖ wins and forms a government, both Ott and Weiss, who live in Dubai (which does not have an extradition treaty with Austria), may be granted a reprieve.
The main question for Europe is what a government led by the FPÖ will mean for Vienna and its relations with Moscow. Critics of Austria claim that the country is already dangerously dependent on Russia. In other words, the centre-right government may publicly take a tough stance towards Moscow, but in reality, it is blocking the process of releasing its economy from dependence on Russia.
At the time, Austria viewed Putin’s ascent to power in the Kremlin from a pragmatic standpoint. Russia is among the country’s top foreign investors. At the end of 2021, Russian companies owned assets in the country worth $25.5 billion, including a major hub for exporting Russian gas to Europe. Austria became a major investor in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was supposed to double Russian natural gas supplies.
If the rest of Europe is surprised by Austria’s turn, it should have been more attentive: Putin has never hidden his interest in this country. In 2018, just a few months after the raid on BVT, he accepted an invitation from the “Austrian-Russian Society of Friendship” to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Russian gas supplies to the country. A few weeks later, he returned for the Knaisl wedding. (Calling herself a “political refugee,” the former foreign minister left Austria and headed an analytical centre in St. Petersburg, and then became a member of the board of directors of “Rosneft.”)
“We have had very good and close relations with Austria for a long time,” Putin said to Austrian television just a few months after the raid on the BVT. “Austria has traditionally been a reliable partner for us in Europe.”
Despite the persistent pressure from Brussels and Washington, the country is moving too slowly away from Russian energy supplies. In the financial sector, the Austrian-owned Raiffeisen Bank International continues to operate one of the largest retail banks in Russia, despite its long-standing promise to exit this market.
“Austria is interesting for Russia because it can use it as a platform for espionage operations against other European countries,” said Thomas Rigler, a Viennese historian who wrote a lot about Austrian intelligence. And if Moscow, as claimed by Western intelligence and the Austrian prosecutor’s office, was indeed responsible for the attempt to influence the Austrian intelligence service, it is evident that the Russians regard the country as a significant trophy and are making substantial efforts to influence its politics.
Kickl and the FPÖ have emerged as, at best, devoted accomplices and, at worst, useful idiots with the Kremlin’s support. However, it is unwise to remain optimistic in this circumstance. Additionally, Kikl opposed European sanctions against Moscow and criticised Western military support for Ukraine, despite the fact that he was not as openly pro-Russian as some of his colleagues.
It is safe to assert that Vienna will endeavour to forge even stronger economic ties with Moscow, with Kikl currently serving as chancellor. Considering that Slovakia and Hungary are already shifting towards Russia, Austria’s entry into the Kremlin’s sphere of influence would create a pro-Russian bloc stretching from the Carpathians to the Eastern Alps, which poses a fundamental threat to the security of all of Europe.
In any case, Austrian voters are the only ones who can stop Putin’s Parteigenossen during the election, and they must prevent their nation from joining the Kremlin’s “axis of evil.”
