Number of Cyber Attacks from Germany Increased, says Russian Foreign Minister

In the period from 2019 to 2020, Russia registered a sufficient number of cyberattacks from Germany to Russian facilities and organizations. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after talks with his German counterpart Heiko Maas. 

Moscow is concerned about the situation with cooperation with Berlin on cybersecurity. “We expressed concern to the German side about the situation in our interaction on cybersecurity,” said Lavrov.

“We noted that last year and this year a significant number of cyberattacks were registered against objects and organizations in Russia, coming from the German segment of the Internet,” said the Russian Minister said.

Recall that at the end of May, the German Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian Ambassador in Berlin, Sergei Nechaev. He was informed that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Germany had put on the wanted list a Russian Dmitry Badin on suspicion of participating in a hacker attack on the Bundestag in April-May 2015. 

In addition, the Department reported that Berlin plans to activate the cyber sanctions regime against Russia because of this case. The EU cyber sanctions regime came into force in May and has not yet been applied. Restrictive measures under this regime may include asset freezes, as well as travel bans to EU countries. The imposition of sanctions requires the unanimous approval of all member countries.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Berlin did not provide evidence of Russia’s involvement in the hacker attack, and strongly rejected the charges. As Andrei Krutskikh, Director of the Department of International Information Security of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said earlier, Moscow offers Berlin to hold consultations on cybersecurity, this would help to settle many claims.