The tourist hotspot at the heart of Putin’s spy operations ...Middle East

For generations, Russian spies and agents have enjoyed their freedom in Austria, which they have used for surveillance, harassment of enemies, recruitment and formulating plots against other European countries, including the UK.

But Moscow’s base for European operations is coming under growing scrutiny, with a new pro-Ukraine Austrian government bringing in a raft of measures to crack down on rampant Russian espionage.

Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 restricted Moscow’s presence across much of Europe and the West, it has intensified its activities in Vienna.

“The accusation or critique of European partners has been that a lot of the Russian assets and intelligence personnel that were expelled moved to Austria and used it as a home base,” said Paul Schliefsteiner, head of Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies.

In February, satellites at the Russian embassy in Vienna were reportedly moved to capture signals from the Munich Security Conference, attended by leaders including Sir Keir Starmer, the former prime minister, and Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State.

The embassy – Russia’s largest in Europe, dubbed “Russencity” – has gained many new enhanced satellite dishes in recent years, thought to be serving as listening devices.

European officials told the Financial Times that the embassy has effectively become the largest signals intelligence (Sigint) gathering node in the Western world, used to tap sensitive communications across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert on Russia’s security services, says Austria has been “key to Russian intelligence operations for many years”. This is partly due to official tolerance of such activities, he said, with deeply entrenched relations between the countries’ security officials.

Kremlin operatives have targeted foreign delegations and organisations in Vienna like the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, he said, adding that diplomats visiting the OSCE headquarters are advised not to use their phones or come too close to the windows to avoid Russian surveillance.

Soldatov said Austria serves as an entry point to Europe for Russian agents. He believes the country is used to direct some of the sabotage operations that are escalating across the continent, from bomb plots against French airports to arson attacks on Ukraine-linked warehouses in the UK.

“The model is that when you organise [operations], you have people acting in country one, but you get everything organised in country two to make things more difficult for counter-intelligence services,” he said.

Edward Lucas, a British author and espionage expert, said Vienna has been useful to Russia because of the many foreign officials at the dozens of international organisations it hosts, from a global headquarters of the UN to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“It’s a great place to recruit your kind of miserable, alcoholic, lecherous, heavily-indebted American, British, French, German diplomat whose career is languishing in some obscure corner of one of the many international agencies based in Vienna,” he said.

The central European location also offers advantages. “If you’re running an agent in the Czech Republic, or trying to recruit someone in Germany, interested in what’s going on at a certain American military base in Italy, doing it from the Vienna station is quite attractive.”

Moscow’s influence in Austria dates back to the liberation of Vienna by the Red Army at the end of the Second World War, and an occupation that continued into the mid-1950s.

The Soviet Union was “running the place” after the war, said Tobias Ellwood, a former foreign office minister who was raised in the Austrian capital. “They left a massive footprint, which has continued ever since.” Ellwood recalls that during the 1970s, “Vienna was just full of spies. Most of my friends’ parents worked for one clandestine service or another.”

Trade ties blossomed after the USSR became the main supplier of gas to Austria in the late 1960s, bringing thousands of Russians to the country.

Austria embraced its role as a “meeting ground” during the Cold War, said Schliefsteiner. Hosting major international bodies came with the obligation to allow member countries a diplomatic presence in Vienna, creating opportunities for Moscow to exploit.

Daniel Fried, a veteran US ambassador and diplomat, said Russian agents have for decades seen Austria as “one giant safe house” and used it as a base for covert activities. He said the lack of monitoring in Vienna has been “an issue of enormous frustration to Americans for a very long time”.

But there are signs that the party may be over for Kremlin agents, with the government signalling a tougher stance in the wake of several cases that drew widespread outrage.

A former Austrian intelligence officer, Egisto Ott, was found guilty of spying for Russia in May in the country’s largest espionage trial in years. The operative conspired with another suspected Russian asset, fugitive Austrian businessman Jan Marsalek, and supplied information used by the Kremlin to target the director of open-source investigation team Bellingcat, Christo Grozev, in 2023.

That same year, Austria’s former foreign minister, Karin Kneissl, moved to Russia following controversy over her relations with the Kremlin, including a dance with Putin at her wedding in 2018.

Government ministers have publicly identified Moscow as a threat to Austria, while foreign minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger travelled to Kyiv in February in a show of solidarity. Schliefsteiner observed that the new foreign minister “seems to have much less concern regarding angering Russia”.

Vienna has signed off on EU sanctions against Moscow, and ended imports of Russian gas.

Austria’s justice ministry is advancing a bill aimed at limiting foreign espionage by making it an offence to spy on foreign groups, punishable with a lengthy prison sentence.

A spokesperson for the ministry told The i Paper: “In view of increasing intelligence activities by foreign actors, the Austrian government clearly committed to a package of measures against espionage.”

The government expelled three Russian officials in May over suspected spying from the embassy. This week, Austrian authorities announced a bust of a company in Vienna supplying components to the Russian military in violation of EU sanctions through a network of international shell companies.

Analysts say that bringing Austria into line with Western Europe in its approach to Russian subversion will be a challenging, long-term process that will require support from international partners.

But the loss of a relative safe haven in Europe would be a major blow to Putin, Soldatov believes, and would “send a strong signal to Moscow”.

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