(Munich) A Russian scientist employed at a German university vehemently denied at his trial on Thursday that he had spied on the European space program Ariane on behalf of Moscow, in the midst of Russian-Western tensions around Ukraine.
Posted at 11:48 a.m.
Ilnur Nagaev, 30, who worked at the University of Augsburg, is answering before the Munich Regional High Court for “secret service agent activity” for Russian Foreign Intelligence SVR, according to the prosecution.
Concretely, justice accuses him of having collected information on behalf of Russia “in the different stages of the development of the European launcher Ariane” and of having received 2500 euros for this.
The accused admitted to having collected information, to having transmitted it and to receiving money, but, he assured, it was about documents in free access, in particular resulting from Internet pages of scientific conferences.
‘I would immediately say no’ if I was asked to work for the Secret Service, he told the hearing, saying no one asked him to use discretion or hide name or phone number from his contact.
“I have never had any interest in working as an intelligence agent,” insisted this young scientist when the prosecution assures that he was contacted by the SVR no later than the fall of 2019.
Horror
Ilnur Nagaev, who refused to be filmed or photographed in the courtroom, said he had experienced “horror” since his arrest in the middle of the street last June when he was about to hand over a USB key to his contact presented by the prosecution as a Russian vice-consul.
“My career, my projects, everything is screwed up,” said this man who did a scientific master’s degree in Russia before being hired in Augsburg.
These charges “seem strangely out of time,” pleaded his lawyer, Jens Palupski.
“Mr. Nagaev only finds himself sitting here because he transmitted scientific papers that are accessible to everyone,” he continued. “And we can assume that the Russian secret services have internet access,” he quipped.
The prosecution accuses him of having met on several occasions with a Russian vice-consul actually employed by Russian foreign intelligence to whom he transmitted, “during numerous meetings, information on research projects in the field of technology aerospace, in particular on the different stages of development of the European Ariane launcher”.
The city of Augsburg, in Bavaria, is the headquarters of several subcontracting companies for the Ariane program.
Mr Nagaev claimed before his judges that he had met a man called Mr Struchov “by complete chance” during a rafting trip in 2019. They then met over a beer and this man referred to a friend wanting to invest in an aerospace project.
Expulsion
Shortly after his arrest, Germany had expelled a Russian diplomat officiating at the consulate in Munich. The government had not made this decision public before Der Spiegel revealed it.
Berlin had also declared two other Russian diplomats “personae non gratae” after the 2019 assassination in Berlin of a former Chechen commander, a crime attributed to Russia.
This trial comes in a context of acute tensions between Russia and Westerners who fear an invasion of Ukraine by Moscow.
Russia has announced since Tuesday the return to their barracks, with supporting images, of an undetermined number of soldiers and equipment which had been deployed in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow, and on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Westerners remain skeptical, saying they see no evidence of de-escalation.
Accusations of cyber espionage against Moscow have soured relations between Russians and Germans in recent months.
But it is above all the attempted poisoning of the opponent Alexei Navalny in August 2020, for which Moscow is held responsible by the West, which has contributed the most to the deterioration of German-Russian relations.
Russian intelligence services have also experienced a strong revival of activity in Europe in recent years, according to experts.