Germany-Russia Relations

Federal prosecutors have charged a German citizen with passing blueprints and building plans of the Bundestag parliament to a suspected GRU agent in the Russian Embassy.

In a press release, Germany's federal prosecutor's office said the suspect worked for a company hired to check the electrical equipment by the Bundestag. In that role, the German national used his access to collect data and pass it on to "an employee in the Russian Embassy in Berlin, who mainly works for the Russian military secret service GRU," between late July and early September 2017.

The German government has declared a Russian diplomat "persona non grata" in response to Moscow's expulsion of EU diplomats last week. Poland and Sweden have made similar announcements.

Russia said the expelled diplomats had participated in a demonstration in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, but Germany disputed this.

"The German diplomat was merely carrying out his task of reporting on developments on the spot in a legal fashion," the Federal Foreign Office of Germany wrote on a statement.

The German Green party is urging Angela Merkel to use the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to press the Kremlin over the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the Green's co-chair, said: "This openly attempted murder through the Kremlin’s mafia-like structures should not just worry us but needs to have real consequences."

At her annual Summer press conference, Angela Merkel stated, "Our opinion is that Nord Stream 2 should be completed ... I don't think it is appropriate to link this business-operated project with the Navalny question."

Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Vladimir Putin critic, has arrived Saturday in the Charite hospital in Berlin, after a evacuation flight from Omsk.

The hospital confirmed Navalny was admitted and that an "extensive medical diagnosis" is being carried out.

Jaka Bizilj, founder of the German NGO Cinemas for Peace, said to reporters: "The good news is that he's stable, so the whole travel did not affect him," Bizilj said. "But there is no reason to celebrate, because he is in a very critical condition. So the real work starts now with the doctors at the Charite."

Germany top prosecutor have now confirmed that he will seek to prove in court that a Georgian man murdered in Berlin last year was a hit ordered by the Russian government.

On August 23, 2019, a Russian man allegedly murdered a 40-year-old Chechen with Georgian citizenship with three shots in Berlin's Kleiner Tiergarten. The suspect was caught a few hours later, after being seen throwing a wig, a bicycle and a gun into the river Spree.