Thankfully, the Europeans aren't stupid.
China doesn't get natural gas any cheaper from the European cutoff because of the way the infrastructure is organised and China is not going to unilateraly pay for the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline like Russia needs, because Russia is too likely to collapse in the near future.
I just wanted to share the journalism pearl.
Any idea which foreign country he was spying for?
> 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.
Well that clears that up.
Is anyone else shocked that the head spy was a spy, or that Germany was being blackmailed by Mossad?
The connection to the current case may actually be a more direct one, via the Israeli spies.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/08/secondworldwar...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I assume you're asking about Israel. HN Search shows about 170k comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... All of those are live. That's a far cry from "automatic cancellation".
If you meant some other country, it's easy enough to check this about any of them.
"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.
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
Can someone please explain what's going on here? What am I culturally missing?
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.
They are adversarial to everyone, but everyone who wants to maintain friendly relations with the U.S. is obliged to play nicely with Israel.
The Spiegel news magazine reported late on Tuesday that investigators were pursuing a possible connection to Azerbaijan.
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.
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.
Combine this with a step economic decline and voila you got the perfect conditions for autocratic sympathies
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.
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.
You mean war, genocide, destruction and misery?
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
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.
> 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
Do you think that Germany might have done something right before this "subjugation"?
Maybe 25-40 million things?
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.
The ex-DDR folk has nothing to do with this. They literally want a tzar and claim the life was better in DDR (translate: got stuff for free, didn't have to do much).
There are plenty of ex-DDR folks who think we should just get on with the war and start annihilating everyone from Dresden to Kamchatka, too.
Alas, the challenge for those who want peace is to get those who see only war to sit down and shut up for a while. Germans are actually good at that when they want to be.
> Germans are actually good at that when they want to be.
Yeah, whatever that is. They don't know themselves.
Unlike the ex-DDR folk craving for Russia to take care for them. There's a reason why that part of Germany turns right and votes AfD now. It's a mix of USSR nostalgia and dislike of the Western Germany because they believe they are still mistreated, 35 years on.
But many Europeans don’t believe that Russia is going to be defeated, nor that the Donetsk->Crimea corridor is worth igniting the rest of Europe over. The most common refrain I hear, is that portion of Ukraine should have independence and neutrality, like Austria. How this is to be attained, of course nobody knows, but it is very definitely a common refrain.
Between the end of the Cold War and the start of the war in Ukraine, there was no peace in Afghanistan, in the Caucasus, in Syria, in Georgia, and in Crimea.
Russian misinformation and funding of far-right parties had never stopped. Every country in Russia's vicinity knew that it was coming for them. In the West relations were peaceful indeed, because all these wars were with faraway peoples.
If you're not a paid shill but genuinely believe what you're saying, you're what they call a useful idiot. This attempt at the apology of Russia, in this pretend calm tone, with emotional bits peppered throughout, is disgusting.
A lot of people who came to the West thanks to the peacefulness of Russia also want to go rebuild their countries 'Some day. Maybe.'
And lower down you say Ukraine should have some neutral autonomous territory. Maybe parts of Poland and of the Baltics and of Finland will also know the prosperity and peace that comes with 'neutrality'.
How dare you.
If Europe gives in to Russia in Ukraine, anyone with basic understanding of history can see that they'll turn their attention towards Baltics, Moldova and maybe Finland and Poland. Putin doesn't want to return those "good years" between cold war and Ukraine conflict, he wants to return to the glory days of Cold War when Russia (Soviet Union) was a real superpower.
Over here in Finland, we would absolutely love to have peaceful relations with Russia, based on mutual respect and trade. But we're under no illusion about it being possible with current Russian administration.
Fortunately, there are growing segments of European society who actually want to have a bright and prosperous future. This doesn’t happen with war - it happens by making sure your neighbors are well fed, too.
I think the real issue is that Russian people consistently fail to hold their leaders accountable. It's the local rich, corrupt oligarchy stealing their prosperity, not any foreign power. They're the ones waging war as well.
I'm worried of growing segments of Western European population that are happy to make an unfair deal with Russia, as long as it's some Eastern Europeans and not them who will suffer the consequences. I guess from their viewpoint some dead Ukrainians, Estonians or Poles is acceptable if they personally get cheaper petrol and gas.
Russian administration is the reflection of the nature of Russian people. Look at Russian history - it is very unlikely that different administration would behave differently.
Putin is not a blip, he is the trend.
In this case, the reporting I've seen on this doesn't mention the country that he was allegedly spying for. That means it was Israel. Because if it was any other country, particularly Russia, it would absolutely be blasted from the rooftops.
It's honestly depressing how captured institutions, the media and Western governments are by the Israeli lobby. My only hope is that history will correctly label all those involved as collaborators.
Let me give an example: Jonathon Pollard [1], who was responsible for one the largest national security breaches in American history and was tried and convicted for espionage. This was a sticking point where basically every Israeli PM would ask for his release. No president would do it until Trump on his first day of his second term [2].
Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson lent Pollard his private plane [3] for his return to Israel where he was given a hero's welcome [4]. He's since met with the Israeli PM and even invited into the US Embassy in Israel [5].
Beyond spies, even Israelis are aware that Israel has become a refuge for the worst kinds of criminals [6].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
[2]: https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-israel-jonathan-poll...
[3]: https://forward.com/fast-forward/461235/watch-flown-to-israe...
[4]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/world/middleeast/jonathan...
[5]: https://www.reuters.com/world/white-house-was-unaware-us-amb...
[6]: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-03-22/ty-article/.p...
Bad news, only nerds care about history.
Agree with everything else you said though.