German authorities have arrested two Russians suspected of espionage since the closing days of the Cold War, according to a report to be published in Der Spiegel news magazine on Monday. Germany's Federal Prosecutor confirmed that two people suspected of espionage activities for a foreign country had been arrested on Tuesday in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hesse by Germany's elite GSG-9 special operations commando.
The prosecutor's office, based in the south-western town of Karlsruhe, did not identify the suspects as Russian spies. "The accused are suspected of having worked in Germany over a long period of time for a foreign intelligence agency," the federal prosecutor said in a statement. "The Federal Crime Office (BKA) is investigating."
Der Spiegel magazine reported that the GSG-9 commandos arrested a Russian couple, who were identified as Heidrun A. and Andreas A.. It said authorities believe the two have worked for Russia's intelligence agency since 1988. The report, in an advance released on Saturday, said the two suspects have denied the accusations.
West and East Germany were hotbeds of espionage during the Cold War with governments and industry on both sides of the Iron Curtain infiltrated by spies. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was a former KGB spy who was stationed in Dresden, in Communist East Germany from 1985 to 1990. But the intensity of spying abated after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and German unification. The arrests, which Der Spiegel said was the first such case since German unification in 1990, could cause tensions in relations between Germany and Russia, which have become close over the last two decades.
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