A German army captain says that he became a spy for Russia over concerns that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war could escalate to involve nuclear weapons.
The man accused of espionage, a 54-year-old army captain identified only as “Thomas H.” due to Germany’s strict privacy laws concerning criminal suspects, said that “it was wrong” of him to share German state secrets with Moscow, as the trial commenced in Düsseldorf on Monday, according to The Kyiv Independent.
The captain was arrested in August and publicly charged on March 19. Thomas, who worked at a military technology facility before his arrest, is accused of sharing photographs of sensitive documents with the Russian consulate in Bonn without receiving anything in exchange.
“He passed on information he had obtained in the course of his professional activities for it to be passed on to a Russian intelligence service,” prosecutors reportedly said during the first day of his trial.
Oliver Berg/picture alliance
Around the same time that Thomas allegedly agreed to spy for Russia, he became a member of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right populist political party that has been accused of pushing Russian interests and policies “straight from Nazi Germany,” according to Reuters.
According to a report from German state-owned news outlet Deutsche Welle, the army captain became concerned about nuclear war after following a pro-Russian TikTok influencer associated with AfD. Thomas then contacted Russian authorities to find out “when it [nuclear war] was going to go off.”
The officer expressed regret for his actions in court, conceding that allegations from prosecutors were “broadly accurate” and reportedly indicating that he was “in a bad mental state” at the time.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email on Monday.
In a case not directly related, former German foreign intelligence agency employee Carsten Linke and Russian-born businessman Arthur Eller have both denied responsibility after being charged last year with selling state secrets to Moscow, according to Agence France Presse.
Russian-state media released an audio recording of purported senior German military officials discussing their concerns about the war in Ukraine earlier this year, prompting alarm from NATO allies over the apparent intelligence leak.
Concerns about the Russia-Ukraine conflict spilling beyond NATO borders and essentially becoming a world war have been escalating since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Although the only nuclear weapons used in war remain the two atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Japan during World War II, repeated threats from Putin and his state- media surrogates have stirred some to fear that Russia could decide to use its vast nuclear arsenal.
During a recent broadcast, Russian-state TV host Dmitry Kiselyov warned that Moscow would immediately launch a nuclear attack on the U.S., U.K. and France if NATO directly interferes with Russia’s quest to defeat Ukraine and claim its territory.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.