Germany's foreign ministry on Thursday called in the Russian ambassador to discuss possible sanctions over a 2015 hacking attack on the German parliament, in an escalating diplomatic row.
The ministry said in a statement it had spoken to Sergey Nechayev after evidence suggested a Russian military spy had targeted leading German politicians including Chancellor Angela Merkel.
German prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Russian national Dmitry Badin on May 5 and accused him of spying against the lower house of parliament in 2015 on behalf of Russia's GRU military intelligence service.
As a result of the warrant, "the German government will seek in Brussels to use the EU cyber sanctions regime against those responsible for the attack on the German Bundestag, including Mr Badin," the ministry said.
Badin is also wanted by the FBI for other cyberattacks, including those targeting the Democrats during the 2016 US presidential election. The operation aimed at the Bundestag, as parliament is known, involved a group known as Sofacy or APT28 that has also struck NATO members and knocked French TV station TV5Monde off the air.
It is believed to have scooped up data from Merkel's email account as well as those of MPs. According to Spiegel magazine, hackers managed to completely copy two of Merkel's email accounts containing correspondence dating between 2012 and 2015.
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