Former German spy chief arrested for attempted treason

It's weird that so many Germans are sympathetic to Russia given that they were subjugated by Russia for decades. Can someone please explain what's going on here? What am I culturally missing?

• ikmckenz · 16 hours ago

  We don’t know what country he was spying for, but we do know it’s not Russia. From the very short article: > The case does not involve Russia, according to information obtained by Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 · 16 hours ago

    Ah, sorry I was thinking of 2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyeedd6kzdko > A German military officer has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for spying for Russia.

  • ChrisMarshallNY · 16 hours ago

    Even "allies" spy on each other. The US has been caught, several times, spying on allies, and Israel spies on everyone .

    • cowlevel · 16 hours ago

      And that's probably why Israel is allied with everyone. They have such good spies, they have endless blackmail material for politicians. For instance, it's suspected that Epstein worked for Israel to acquire blackmail material. We know Epstein recorded everything that happened on that island, and not secretly.

      • bigfatkitten · 15 hours ago

        Israel doesn’t really have any allies other than the United States, and even that is a one-sided relationship. They are adversarial to everyone, but everyone who wants to maintain friendly relations with the U.S. is obliged to play nicely with Israel.

        • cowlevel · 15 hours ago

          Most of Europe and especially Germany; and Oceania; and half the gulf states. And that's just the places I know of, because the news about them is in English.

  • starik36 · 16 hours ago

    It's in the 3rd paragraph: The Spiegel news magazine reported late on Tuesday that investigators were pursuing a possible connection to Azerbaijan.

    • lostmsu · 12 hours ago

      Azerbaijan and Russia signed a Declaration on Allied Interaction on 22 February 2022 when Russia escalated.

• estearum · 16 hours ago

  There's a certain subset of every population that just wants to be dominated. Some of these people don't have the courage to ask their romantic partner or a professional, so they try to realize their kink through political means.

• 1247agF · 16 hours ago

  Are you sympathetic to MBS when you buy oil from Saudi Arabia?

  • estearum · 16 hours ago

    There are obviously people throughout the western world (including East Germany) who are sympathizers of Russia well beyond just buying energy from them. Pretty sure GP is referring to those people.

    • 123ago · 16 hours ago

      The are practically no sympathizers in the sense that they want to revive the Warsaw Pact. There are: 1) People who want to trade. 2) People who appreciate Russia's undeniable cultural achievements. 3) Organizations like the LaRouche Schiller institute that are most likely CIA fronts, double agents or both.

      • malfist · 15 hours ago

        That is moving the goal posts quiet far. Being sympathetic to Russia does not require someone to want the Warsaw pact resurrected

      • estearum · 15 hours ago

        Yes yes Vlad you are so right There are just people who like Russian ballet and then the CIA. So long as you do not wish to recreate the Warsaw Pact, then you are not a sympathizer but just a Very Normal German Thank you Vlad for your contribution

        • 3ahsG · 15 hours ago

          For the edification of the Ukrainian online hall monitor, here is the Washington Post on the value of the LaRouche network: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/01/15/s... For the rest: Stop interfering with EU politics and free speech. I hope Ukraine never joins the EU, just as I hope Russia never does.

          • estearum · 15 hours ago

            Your provided evidence of LaRouche being a CIA front is an article in which the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency orders the DIA to stop interacting with them for fear of them being a Russian front? > Graham recalled that LaRouche associates came up with what he called good intelligence about the situation in Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere. Graham said that in the mid-1970s, he and DIA colleagues concluded that some of the information was so sensitive that they suspected the LaRouche group was getting some of it from the Soviets or another government. Graham added that he couldn't prove the contention Hmm... what's more likely: Russian sympathizing group with connections to Russia and advocating Russian positions and disseminating intelligence of likely-Russian origin is... Russia-aligned? No no, it must be CIA-aligned because umm... they gave info to the CIA. There are no conceivable reasons that a truly Russia-sympathizing group would want to give the CIA information, right? Lmfao

      • pepperoni_pizza · 13 hours ago

        > Russia's undeniable cultural achievements. You mean war, genocide, destruction and misery?

  • throw1234567891 · 14 hours ago

    I don't buy oil from Saudi Arabia. I buy gasoline from a local gas station. It doesn't say where the oil came from.

• petre · 16 hours ago

  > Can someone please explain what's going on here? Putin got'em addicted to cheap Russian gas and paid up anti nuclear NGOs who also got cash from big oil. Also Berlin still has some Russian minority since the GDR. That includes anti Putin Russian diaspora or people that just needed a break from paranoia and brespredel.

• sam1714 · 16 hours ago

  Similar to why there's a significant fraction of pro-mainland China people in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Reasons include people who benefitted from the Soviet Union, often due to business and trade. Analogy would be Foxconn, a Taiwanese company which is dependent on manufacturing in China. Nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses/rosy retrospection, Ostalgie in German. Families that were ethnically from Russia, moved during the Soviet Union times and still have ties to Russia. The former East Germany is way more pro-Russian than the former West Germany, showing the effects of these factors.

• germoney · 15 hours ago

  From what I see here it’s a mixture of anti-Americanism, „Ostslgie“ (the longing for the good old times of the DDR, a feeling often inherited from parents) and a crap ton of Russian propaganda that floods social media. Combine this with a step economic decline and voila you got the perfect conditions for autocratic sympathies

• 1718627440 · 15 hours ago

  Some part of the population was subject to 60 years of continuous propaganda. That's three generations. You might say people should be able to see beyond that, but the ones influencing them were professionals too.

• pessimizer · 15 hours ago

  > It's weird that so many Germans are sympathetic to Russia given that they were subjugated by Russia for decades. Do you think that Germany might have done something right before this "subjugation"? Maybe 25-40 million things?

  • fakedang · 15 hours ago

    If the Holocaust were that "successful", Israel wouldn't exist today. Perhaps you're confusing with Mao.

    • dudefeliciano · 15 hours ago

      you do know that jews were not the only targets of the nazi killing machine?

      • fakedang · 14 hours ago

        If you're including all other targets, still nowhere near 25 million. 11-17 million.

        • dudefeliciano · 14 hours ago

          The figure that is usually talked about for the eastern front is 27 million deaths for the Soviet Union.

        • wat10000 · 13 hours ago

          Are you only counting civilians killed directly by the Nazis? The Soviets alone lost 9+ million military dead. Millions of civilians died of starvation not part of any specific extermination program.

• ofrzeta · 15 hours ago

  I would not say it's many but certainly there are some. I found it surprising that in recent sabotage or spy cases in Germany there were often Ukrainian or Latvian accomplices to the Russians. But then again it's obvious that not all Ukrainians have the same opinion about the war.

• pepperoni_pizza · 13 hours ago

  The Eastern Germans remember the old days fondly (you know, before "the West destroyed their industry" and whatnot) while the Western Germany had a national policy of "not provoking Russia" and "accepting its sphere of influence" for basically all of it's existence. From personal experience I would also say that Germans and Russians are alike in quite a few ways - both are pretty chauvinist societies looking down at other nations, and both have very low empathy. Obviously, there are big cultural differences as well.

Well at least he paid for it and did not outright steal it :) Any idea which foreign country he was spying for?

• dannyw · 16 hours ago

  Mossad/Israel at least: > Documents supplied to the Hamburg court indicated that Hanning was the go-between with the Israelis. According to media reports, these Hamburg court documents contained clues to his other business activity with classified BND information. https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2026/10/06/former-ge... Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and western intelligence precedent (eg russian “illegals program”) is that when it’s Russia/China, it’s named. So the omission here itself (and denial of Russia) is some additional speculative information, on top of his already known ties to Mossad.

  • whimsicalism · 15 hours ago

    with friends like these…

  • tome · 14 hours ago

    Are you sure it says that? As far as I can see it only says he dealt with Israeli ex-spies in an (unrelated) kidnapping and that he was friendly with Israeli spies.

• boredhedgehog · 16 hours ago

  Spiegel says Azerbaijan.

It's like one of those "one last job before quiting for good but gone bad" movie plots.

> Hanning is strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, attempted treason, and espionage. Well that clears that up. Is anyone else shocked that the head spy was a spy, or that Germany was being blackmailed by Mossad?

• 133af · 15 hours ago

  He was a career bureaucrat who got position after position. BND was just one of them. The list of German politicians and bureaucrats with scandals is long, ranging from Olaf Scholz to von der Leyen. So this isn't too surprising.

  • 3seashells · 15 hours ago

    When it gets to bad, you send them to retire in strassbourg

    • kingleopold · 15 hours ago

      or you elect them few times so they stop nuclear to save energy.

• hylaride · 15 hours ago

  As a geopolitical nerd, I've consumed a lot of non-fiction espionage content. In general, there's a general theme that German intelligence is a joke at best. He must have gotten too greedy or very lazy/sloppy.

  • trhway · 15 hours ago

    >German intelligence is a joke at best i'm not qualified to pass any judgement here, just Wirecard comes to mind. Routing sensitive payments, including to the network of secret informants, through Wirecard while the Wirecard guy (son of a KGB spy) was safari-ing (and posting photos of it) in Syria with the Wagner mercenaries... He lives right now in Russia, and it looks like German intelligence hasn't exacted any revenge.

    • woadwarrior01 · 15 hours ago

      TBF, Jan Marsalek (the Wirecard guy) is Austrian, although Wirecard was a German company.

    • throw1234567891 · 14 hours ago

      Neither has anybody else towards any individual living in "run away to Russia" street.

      • trhway · 8 hours ago

        while Russia executes its runaway people across the Europe.

  • fakedang · 15 hours ago

    Name one EU country's intelligence service that has a reputation, any reputation - good or bad. European intelligence services (ex-Russia/Ukraine) are a bunch of jokers. They are lagging behind so much vs their adversarial peers.

    • garbawarb · 15 hours ago

      Maybe that's what they want you to think.

    • dauertewigkeit · 15 hours ago

      The French have a reputation. And the British although they are part of Europe, not the EU.

    • hylaride · 15 hours ago

      > Name one EU country's intelligence service that has a reputation, any reputation - good or bad. European intelligence services (ex-Russia/Ukraine) are a bunch of jokers. They are lagging behind so much vs their adversarial peers. MI5/MI6 (unless you literally mean the European Union). They benefit from Five Eyes, though. The French system is considered quite good, but focused on the Middle East and Africa. It's actually quite capable, considering how independent minded they are, often refusing cooperation with others. Though their intelligence quality can vary outside those core areas. The Dutch are quite highly regarded and punch above their weight. The AIVD got inside the Russian Gozy Bear hacking group and the MIVD also caught the GRU trying to hack the OPCW in The Hague - even exposing their taxi receipts. The Nordic states are known to have capable services that operate quietly, especially focused on Russia. The Finns especially. The Baltic states also take it seriously, obviously focused on Russia. TL;DR there are many capable intelligence agencies working in the EU, but they're usually much smaller and focused. Also - they usually prefer to NOT be in the limelight.

      • fakedang · 14 hours ago

        I meant the EU. Obviously including MI5 is kinda cheating. The French are too myopic around the Middle East and Africa. They don't have any visibility into, say, Russia, even though Russia is asymmetrically embedded into them. That's an example of the problem they, and most others, face - they can't adapt rapidly to changing trends in the global scene. I still remember the disaster that is January 2022. The US was continually stating that the Russians were planning an invasion, based on CIA intelligence, yet in the lead-up to the war, literally every EU country was calling the US a warmonger. And now with the US becoming increasingly hostile to the EU, the EU countries have been completely blindsided by that too. And let's not forget, no Western nation has any reasonable intelligence presence in Israel, the culprit here, except for maybe the US and UK. Israel enjoys a disproportionate amount of intelligence asymmetry vs them.

        • tome · 14 hours ago

          The culprit where?

          • fakedang · 11 hours ago

            It's mentioned in other articles that the spy chief in the above article was being handled by Israel.

        • hylaride · 14 hours ago

          I'm not saying the French are perfect, but French intelligence can be solid - their dossiers on Iraq WMDs were accurate and they (rightly) concluded that Saddam's opaqueness was to give Iran pause on any thoughts of attack. The myopia is more an issue with politicization, which I would argue is a real and persistent problem with French intelligence - and yes, they had a huge gap with Russia. Politicization of intelligence is toxic anywhere it's applied. The US/UK fell victim to it in the 2003 Iraq invasion run up, and core to that politicization was politicians selectively bypassing intelligence analysts and grabbing raw collected data - which contains all manner of bad stuff from people just trying to get money, etc. A counter example is back in the Iraq run-up, an American diplomat wanted to themselves present the Iraq WMD "evidence" to a senior Canadian official, and the Canadian official curtly responded "no, send it via our intelligence channels and our analysts will compile a report" - which the diplomat knew that via the five eyes alliance, they'd very quickly and correctly realize that the evidence was weak. I'm not saying that Canadians brilliant and invincible to politicization, but the incentives at the time for the Canadians were to "do it properly". Israel is a special case, and it is not a fair comparison (even against the CIA) as a country constantly threatened and attacked . Even they fell victim to warning failures (if recent allegations are even half true) of the Oct 7th attacks when politicians wanted to focus more on Hezbollah over Gaza and ignored other warnings (including literal videos of Hamas training attacks on tanks and wall breaches that Israeli border guards recorded). Also, and I cannot stress this enough, a good chunk of intelligence credited to the US/CIA is correlated and collected via the five eyes alliance. There is no intelligence alliance like it in the world and it gives a far greater picture than the US alone could.

      • pseudohadamard · 8 hours ago

        MI5? You mean this lot: https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk...

    • yread · 14 hours ago

      Didn't European intelligence services warn US of specifics of 9/11?

    • lofaszvanitt · 14 hours ago

      Good luck untangling who is at what level. Especially if your connection to the outside world is barely more than a needle's eye.

  • someone4958923 · 15 hours ago

    "If you want to tell Putin something, say it to the BND" is more or less known in that context.

  • riedel · 15 hours ago

    The CIA actually build the Gehlen Org (now BND) from some ex-Nazis as spy's against the communists. Is all a very sad joke.[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/08/secondworldwar...

• dudefeliciano · 15 hours ago

  There is no evidence of Mossad involvement. Far from me to defend Israel's spy agency but the article only mentions a possible connection to Azerbaijan.

  • cowlevel · 15 hours ago

    This one doesn't since it's a US outlet and they don't have free speech in the US, on Israel-related matters. The Irish Times reported the Israel connection though.

    • dudefeliciano · 15 hours ago

      The Irish Times reported an Israel connection regarding a separate case involving him, the Block Scandal. As far as I am aware that case did not involve giving out state secrets to other governments. This article mentions Der Spiegel which reported the investigation on the possible Azerbaijan connection.

      • raffael_de · 14 hours ago

        Azerbaijan doesn't give a rat's *** about German state secrets. :) It's either BS or they served as a proxy.

        • rotis · 14 hours ago

          Azerbaijan is a former soviet republic. So them playing role of a proxy for Russia or stealing secrets to sell to Russians makes sense to me.

    • hunterpayne · 11 hours ago

      "they don't have free speech in the US, on Israel-related matters" Is the sky in your world green?

  • thisislife2 · 13 hours ago

    The Russians claim otherwise - https://www.rt.com/news/646794-german-spy-chief-arrested/ -... According to them, his private agency also sub-contracted some high-profile kidnapping to Yaakov Perry, the former chief of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet.

• riedel · 15 hours ago

  Actually the even more fun part is that they only found out because they raided his house due to this really sketchy case he was contracted for via his really sketcy swiss(!) private eye company: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/20/germany-christ...

  • layer8 · 14 hours ago

    “Among several alleged accomplices are August Hanning, a former head of Germany’s federal intelligence service, the BND, who according to prosecutors forged the initial contact between Block and the Israeli spy firm believed to have carried out the abduction.” The connection to the current case may actually be a more direct one, via the Israeli spies.

In my country, they posted the news translated as: 'Spy chief is detained in counts of espionage' I just wanted to share the journalism pearl.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49975688

I take BND less seriously since I learned they're eager to sell you merch: https://www.bnd.shop/en

• camkego · 15 hours ago

  Someone downvoted you, but if you do look at the sweatshirt sales webpage, it does say this "Licensor: Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German Foreign Intelligence Service The BND logo is a registered trademark of the Bundesnachrichtendienst in Berlin, Germany. The BND is not involved in the operation, production, or sale of these products and accepts no liability. The BND does not receive any revenue from the BND Shop." Which does seem a little bizarre.

  • nom · 12 hours ago

    the company that runs it calls it 'first official store' https://www.antsandfriends.com/bnd-shop/ It very much sounds like this was not their idea originally... wouldn't be surprised if this was initiated by BND, and they are legally not allowed to run it themselves or sth like that

• GuinansEyebrows · 12 hours ago

  i'll take one Bemale Nody Dinspector shirt, please.

The German Roger Hollis.

This (paywalled) article in Süddeutsche Zeitung has a lot more background info, for instance about Hanning's Russian connections. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/hanning-festnahme-spiona... In 2013 he was a defence witness for the oligarch Oleg Deripaska who was then tied to Putin. He was also on the board of companies such as PNB Banka (operated by a Russian Grigory Guselnikov). Also connections to many shady "security consulting" firms, among them "Prevent" who were suspected to have planted child porn with a manager of HSH-Nordbank. Incidentally child porn was also planted with the husband of Christina Block in Denmark, a case in which Hanning is also involved. On the angle of Azerbaijan who allegedly bought Hanning's secrets it's interesting that in the past there were several court cases about corruption against German politicians. It's summarised in the so called Aserbaidschan-Affäre (Azerbaijan Affair) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aserbaidschan-Aff%C3%A4re See also https://www.esiweb.org/proposals/caviar-diplomacy

• uxhacker · 14 hours ago

  A link to a non paywalled version of the Süddeutsche Zeitung article on archive.is https://archive.is/sJkwC

High key, maybe look at Gerhard Schröder for the same thing. His ceding of sovereignty over Germany's energy infrastructure and subsequent board seat at Gazprom is a flashing red siren.

• ndr42 · 14 hours ago

  No, the thing he was arrested for is having classified documents in his possession.