La Russia trasforma Vienna nella capitale europea dello spionaggio con un’enorme rete di intelligence
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-turns-vienna-into-europes-spy-capital-with-massive-signals-intelligence-network-16943
di UNITED24Media
10 commenti
And their spy redundancy backup is mere 80km away in Bratislava, Slovakia.
[Vienna always had a reputation](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46228163) as a hotbed of espionage during the Cold war
> Situated close to the Iron Curtain, neutral Austria was a convenient listening post during the Communist era, according to Siegfried Beer, historian and founder of the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies.
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> “Being based in Vienna during the Cold War, meant intelligence services could organise all kinds of things into Yugoslavia, into Hungary, into Czechoslovakia, even as far as Poland,” he says.
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> “The Austrian government was eager to remain neutral. So it developed an atmosphere in which everybody was pretty cosy and profited from each other. It was a business, you know.
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> “Espionage was a business. It still is. It brings a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot of support into the country.”
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> Today the Iron Curtain has gone, but the spies remain.
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> These days, Vienna is home to one of the headquarters of the United Nations, and the European security body, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
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> That means that many countries have not just an embassy, but up to two more diplomatic missions to the international organisations. These provide both diplomatic immunity and cover for spies.
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> The annual report of the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT) says Austria is a “favoured area of operations” for foreign spies and the number of intelligence agents remains “high”.
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They have a very peculiar and no doubt intentionally made law that says that they only forbid espionage against Austria itself. Which means their security services could be kept at a minimum and basically sleep at work cause who would spy on Austria if it’s economically and militarily absolutely insignificant (less than 10 million people, much smaller than Moscow), not a NATO member AND lets them do what they want anyway? Just like Switzerland and Ireland they are happy they are surrounded by EU/NATO countries and until now can stay total freeloaders as far as defence spending is concerned.
(Yes, I know that as a EU member they are theoretically obliged to help, including militarily, if EU member is attacked, but nobody believed in such a scenario until 2022).
This has been going on since Stalin. This is one of the reasons why Austria remained neutral over the years and Stalin agreed not to occupy it.
Austrians have received independence and capitalism, in exchange allowed soviet spies to flourish there.
I am so sick and tired of this stupid framing – as if the Russians are the only spies in Vienna.
EVERYONE has spies in Vienna, EVERYONE.
The Americans have a whole surveilance station across from the UN headquarters spying on everyone there (1) and until recently had a telcom surveilance station in a villa in the 18th district, capturing “70% of Vienna’s telecommunications” (2). And thats just the NSA and CIA, nevermind the MI6, French, Germans and Israelis.
Yes, there are dozens of Russian spies active in Vienna, just like US spies, German spies, Israeli spies and many more. It’s all part of the game and a lot of information gathered for the benefit of the West happens in Vienna.
(1) [https://wien.orf.at/v2/news/stories/2670056/](https://wien.orf.at/v2/news/stories/2670056/)
(2) [https://wien.orf.at/v2/news/stories/2603167/](https://wien.orf.at/v2/news/stories/2603167/)
And? Why Austria has drones? Just fly it and destroy the receiver heads from above.. couldn’t be so hard
Wasn’t Vienna always a Spy Capital?
The Soviets knew what they were doing when they insisted on constitutional neutrality. I hope one day Austrians see that neutrality serves Russia and its cronies above anyone else and get rid of it. But sadly it has devolved into a marker of national identity.
My eye opener was when an acquaintance who works for the Australian government wasn’t allowed to bring his work laptop when travelling to Austria. And he wasn’t even in Vienna. He flew from Dubai to Salzburg and the same way back.
Cold War has returned
Vienna was a real hotbed of espionage during the Cold War just like ByGollie already remarked here, and they still have a major pro-putinistanian lobby and sentiment there as far as I know – even more so than Germany, France, Slovakia or Hungary have, I’d reckon; not an expert on the recent and current developments in this regard, though. Would definitely be interesting to receive some takes by Austrians on the politics over there; I know the FPÖ is deep in the pocket of the fascist dictatorship in the East, of course.
Also, being a EU but not a NATO member, of course they will be and already are one of the prime targets of hybrid warfare by putinistan – dang, if they weren’t shielded by geography, they’d quite probably be the next target of a putinistanian military offensive, while everyone’s eyes are on the Baltics mostly.