Russia Spied on NATO Drills in Lithuania
Russia tried to spy on NATO exercises in Lithuania. Bundeswehr Inspector General Carsten Breuer sees this as proof of the real threat from Moscow.
The Gaze reports on this with reference to Spiegel.
According to the report, in the middle of last week, a Russian reconnaissance aircraft was spotted in Belarusian airspace during NATO's Iron Wolf exercise.
The aircraft apparently focused its attention on NATO exercises in Lithuania, in which the armed forces of Germany and other NATO countries took part. NATO forces immediately switched to encrypted communications.
Bundeswehr Inspector General Carsten Breuer, who was attending the exercise that day, called the incident proof of how real the threat to Lithuania was.
A few days earlier, probably with the help of a conventional drone, Russia had monitored another exercise in Lithuania involving German helicopters.
German military counter-intelligence has long warned that the German brigade in the process of being deployed to Lithuania is being monitored by Russian special services. For better protection, counterintelligence plans to expand its presence on the ground.
The new German government also plans to pass a law this year that will facilitate cooperation and information exchange between counterintelligence and German foreign intelligence in Lithuania.
The German brigade in Lithuania should be fully operational by 2027.
Lithuania and Germany signed an agreement finalising all the details of the deployment of the German brigade in Lithuania in mid-September last year.