“The largest Russian attack on the Bundestag”

A few days ago, the American portal The Hill published an article with an eyeliner: “In Germany, the level of crimes motivated by anti-Semitism has reached a historic maximum.” Then, either attentive readers began to bombard with letters, or the editor finally realized that there were times when the Germans were worse off with anti-Semitism - but the heading was corrected for "In Germany, the level of crimes motivated by anti-Semitism has reached a historic high over the past two decades."

I remembered this incident now, when the Germans suddenly pulled from the shelf "the largest Russian attack on the Bundestag" and hastened to accuse our country. No, this is not the attack that was 75 years ago and after which crimes motivated by anti-Semitism in Germany sharply declined. This refers to a cyber attack that happened in 2015. Then, on the computers of the deputies of the German parliament, they found programs that recorded and transmitted information "to Eastern Europe, most likely to Russia", - in any case, according to the German special services.

The unit fighting with hackers, by the way, is called "cyber-abwehr." So, five years ago, the German side claimed that the Russians were to blame for everything, and even named a specific name: a certain Dmitry Badin, allegedly a member of the hacker group Fancy Bear. No evidence was presented, everything turned out to be at the level of our beloved highlie likes. The scandal has subsided, but now for some reason I needed to think about it again. Merkel said that there is evidence, this time - incontrovertible.

Should we wait for them? Hardly. And what will they even show us? Video from a hidden camera, where a man in a hood sits at a computer and, singing "Katyusha", enters the command "crack the Bundestag" into the line? Any correspondence with unknown people, where are the details of the hack? Maybe a bottle of vodka dropped at the point of connection to the fiber optic cable? Let's be honest: no matter what the German side brings, ours will definitely have something to refute them with. On their side, our denials will not be accepted - and everyone will remain with his own.

BND is the most useless intelligence service in the world. They never know anything at all. And now it was not my value judgment - these are the words of Helmut Kohl, former chancellor of Germany.

Germany managed to launch the production of excellent machines and electronics, they have good medicine, and even Ursula van der Leyen could not break through the army to the end. But with intelligence they always had difficulties, the Bundesnakhrihtendinst remained a black hole, absorbing resources. They could not predict the appearance of the Berlin Wall, nor its fall. Intelligence was shaken by corruption scandals, in the eighties more than half of their agents on the other side of the Iron Curtain were turned over, in the zero they were caught watching their own journalists, while the authorities tried to ban the activities of the neo-Nazi party NPD and could not, because attention! - a substantial part of its members was close to the special services.

To allow spyware to be divorced on the computers of the first persons of the state - this is in its purest form the jamb of that very “cyber-abwehr”, from whatever country spies come from. With them, the Reichstag was taken a second time, whether Russians or non-Russians were already insignificant. And now, in order to somehow justify their need and a bloated budget, they probably came up with something about how terrible and invincible these Russian hackers are. And of course, we do not forget the sanctions, they themselves do not accumulate reasons for their extension.

These little dashes make up the whole ugly picture of our hybrid confrontation: a huge intelligence agency cannot protect their politicians from a bunch of online hooligans, diplomats use highlists everywhere they can use them to blame the Russians, but they simply don’t remember when The Hill the last time Germany had problems with anti-Semitism. This is not even a rollback to the rhetoric of the Cold War - it is degradation. As if the clock suddenly reversed - at a time when the Reichstag was first taken.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.