How Russian spies used Videos of Cristiano Ronaldo on YouTube to pass information to Kremlin

by Andrea
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How Russian spies used Videos of Cristiano Ronaldo on YouTube to pass information to Kremlin

Moscow agents used sophisticated ways to pass confidential information from NATO, the European Union and the United Nations to Russia

Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag looked like a normal couple. They lived a quiet life in the medieval city of Marburg, north of Frankfurt, with his daughter. The husband had a respectable work as a mechanical engineer who appeared to support the whole aggregate, allowing his wife to take care of the house and daughter. For their neighbors, the only strange thing about the couple was the “east” accent and the last name “ANSCHLAG”, which means “attack”. However, behind this apparent normality, Andreas and Heidrun were Russian spies to operate in Germany for over two decades, responsible for spending thousands of information from NATO and the European Union to Moscow.

With the coverage of a common German middle class life, the two spies, known in Moscow by the names of “Pit” and “Tina” code, used sophisticated techniques to convey to Moscow sensitive information. What seemed to be absolutely normal comments on Cristiano Ronaldo’s best moments on YouTube hid the communications of one of the world’s largest secret service agencies. The messages were carefully composed with punctuation sequences that could be converted into numerical codes, which refer to pre-composed messages.

In one of several examples that came to be discovered by the authorities it was possible to see one of the Anschlag communications with the Russian secret services in a video of the Portuguese international. “Great video, and the song is amazing,” wrote Espia, with the name of user @alpenkuh1 (cow Alpina 1). “He runs and plays like the devil,” responds to the name of user @crsitanofootballer, linked to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

But the spy pair also used “traditional” methods of the secret world of espionage, conveying satellite messages and deliveries at dead points. It was through these deliveries that the two Russian agents, which are part of a network of infiltrated spies known as “illegal”, obtained information from one of their main sources. Every month, Raymond Poeteray, an officer from the Netherlands Foreign Ministry, let Pens USB with sensitive information in a combined hiding place, which was later collected by Andreas. The Dutch politician received 72,000 euros from Russian secret services in exchange for NATO’s confidential documents over four years.

In exchange for this information, agents received 100,000 euros a year directly from Moscow. Twice a week, Heidrun received detailed SVR information through a shortwave radio receiver that was linked to a decoder and a computer in one of the suburban villa where they lived with their daughter, a young medical student who was unaware of the true identity of parents. Espia responded to SVR orders with satellite communications.

The whole scheme would end rapidly in 2011, when a German special forces team broke into the house door and entered the adental building. Heidrun was caught in the act. He was in a way of receiving a coded message on the short wave radio and panicked, falling from his chair and pulling the cable connection.

Andreas was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and Heidrun received a five and a half year sentence in July 2013. However, by the end of 2015, the two were eventually released and deported to Russia.

Two Austrian children who had died

The couple was recruited by the Russian secret services even before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Born in Russia, the two spies were undergoing Austrian citizens born in South America. The couple requested separately Austrian passports in 1984, showing false documents that they had been born in Argentina and that she had been born in Peru. The two only married in 1990, when Andreas studied mechanical engineering in Germany.

According to the prosecutors responsible for the case, it was the nature of the spies passports that sounded the first alert. In 2011, Austria ordered an audit to all passports issued in the eighties, which had revealed that the ANSCHLUSS stole the identity of two Austrian children who had died. This is a common technique among Russian spies that operate as “illegal” abroad, obtaining false documents with the identities of dead children and then working slowly to give credibility to their life history in the target country.

But there are suspicions that the origin of detention will come on the other hand. Authorities believe the two spies were alerted by Moscow that a possible detention could be imminent during a trip to Serbia in the summer of 2011. Days before police entered the couple’s house, Andreas had just sold the car and warning his company that he was going to leave his job shortly before being captured.

Many suspect that the couple was exposed by Aleksandr Potyev, a SVR colonel and responsible for the “illegal” program, which deserted to the United States when he learned that Russian secret services were preparing polygrade tests to find the source of information escapes. Days before being arrested and sentenced to 18 years in a maximum security arrest, US authorities have carried out one of the largest spy arrests on American soil since the end of the Cold War, capturing ten Russian citizens who have lived infiltrated in the country for several years with false identities.

These spies had been under surveillance for several years and it is believed that their detention happened as soon as US secret services learned that Poteyev was going to be exposed. The FBI found that Russian spies managed to get close to an American scientist who worked on the development of antibunker nuclear bombs, as well as a New York financier with strong political connections. However, the authorities suggest that the Russians were unable to obtain relevant information in either case.

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