A Russian diplomat discovered lifeless on the sidewalk exterior the embassy in Berlin final month is believed by German authorities to have been a undercover agent for a Russian intelligence company, Der Spiegel journal reported Friday.
The physique of the 35-year-old diplomat was discovered on the morning of October 19; he apparently fell from an higher ground of the Russian embassy constructing within the German capital, although it was unclear why he fell or what the reason for dying was, Der Spiegel reported.
Der Spiegel and investigative website Bellingcat report that the lifeless diplomat had been accredited as second secretary on the Russian embassy in Berlin since 2019, however German safety officers consider he was an undercover officer for Russia’s FSB, the inner safety and counterintelligence service, and that he was associated to a high-ranking FSB officer.
The Russian embassy didn’t conform to an post-mortem, and the person’s diplomatic immunity meant that Germany’s public prosecutor couldn’t perform an investigation, Der Spiegel reported.
Russian and German officers acknowledged the dying of the diplomat on Friday following the Der Spiegel report.
“A tragic accident with a Russian diplomat occurred on October 19, 2021,” the Russian embassy stated in a press release. “All of the formalities associated to sending the diplomat’s physique to his homeland have been promptly settled with the competent legislation enforcement and medical authorities of Germany in accordance with the present apply.”
“We take into account the hypothesis that appeared in a lot of Western media within the context of this tragic incident to be completely incorrect.”
A spokeswoman on the German international ministry informed CNN the federal government was conscious of the dying of the diplomat, however because of “causes of non-public safety of the individuals involved and their kinfolk, no additional particulars will likely be disclosed at this second.”
The dying of the diplomat got here almost a yr after an investigation by CNN and Bellingcat revealed that an FSB toxins crew of about six to 10 brokers trailed Russian opposition chief Alexey Navalny for greater than three years earlier than he was poisoned in August 2020 with the deadly nerve agent Novichok.
One of many FSB brokers was later duped into telling Navalny over the cellphone that the Novichok had been planted in his underpants — a element that emerged when Navalny posed as a member of Russia’s Nationwide Safety Council and known as the agent to press him for particulars of the operation, as was revealed solely in one other CNN-Bellingcat investigation.
