In protest against a hacker attack, Germany recalls its ambassador to Russia for a week

BERLIN – After a suspected hacker attack on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party, Germany said Monday it had recalled its ambassador to Russia for a week of consultations in Berlin.

Germany last week accused Russian military agents of hacking into the leadership of Scholz’s Social Democrats and other sensitive government and industrial targets. Berlin joined NATO and other European countries in warning that Russia’s cyber espionage would have consequences.

The Foreign Office in Berlin said on Monday that the government was taking the latest incident “seriously” and that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had decided to recall German Ambassador Alexander Lambsdorff. He would return to Moscow after a week, it was said.

“The federal government takes this event very seriously and represents behavior against our liberal democracy and the institutions that support it,” said Foreign Office spokeswoman Kathrin Deschauer.

Baerbock said last week that Russian military cyber operators were behind the hacking of emails from the Social Democrats, the leading party in the ruling coalition. Officials said the hackers exploited Microsoft Outlook.

The German Interior Ministry said in a statement last week that the hacking campaign began as early as March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with emails at the Social Democratic Party’s headquarters being accessed from December that year. The hacker attacks focused on German companies, including those in the defense and aerospace sectors, as well as targets related to the war in Ukraine.

The statement said that in late January, international efforts led by the FBI shut down a botnet of compromised network devices used by Russian hackers – known as APT28, or Fancy Bear. According to the US State Department, the group has a history of malicious and destabilizing behavior.

German officials said the attacks continued for months.

Relations between Russia and the West have been strained since Moscow’s attack on Ukraine. The USA, Germany and many other European countries have supported Ukraine militarily in the ongoing war.

In Copenhagen, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said: “Some Europeans still believe that the war is only in Ukraine, but at the moment we are seeing more and more aggressiveness from Russia.”

“We are likely to see hybrid attacks in different areas. It can be critical infrastructure,” he added after meeting his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen. “What Russia is doing and planning is unacceptable. Russia is ready to use all possible means to harm our societies.”

In Prague, the Czech Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador over the attacks by the same APT28 group, which is linked to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.

“I have decided to summon the Russian ambassador because of the cyber attacks on Czech institutions and critical infrastructure,” Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said on the social media network standards and their own commitments.”

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Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark and Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic contributed.