When Yevgeny Prigozhin marched to Moscow on June 24 to claim the removal of Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of Staff Gerasimov, it was the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko who mediated between the mutinous leader of the Wagner troupe and Vladimir Putin . In a phone call, Lukashenko claims to have persuaded Prigozhin to lay down his arms and turn around.
According to research by WDR and NDR, the German foreign intelligence service BND is said to have monitored communication between Prigozhin and Lukashenko and also wiretapped this phone call.
A spokesman for the BND did not want to comment on the report when asked by WDR and NDR. The intelligence service “generally does not comment publicly on matters relating to any intelligence findings or activities,” the spokesman said. This makes no statement as to whether the facts of the case are correct or not. “The Federal Intelligence Service reports on relevant topics, particularly those of the Federal Government and the competent, secretly meeting bodies of the German Bundestag.”
After the Prigozhin uprising, German politicians criticized the German secret service because, according to official information, the BND had only informed the federal government about the events in Russia on June 24 – when the Wagner fighters had already marched to Moscow. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after the mutiny that the German secret services were not as well informed about the impending Prigozhin uprising as the US secret services.
According to WDR and NDR, the BND had received a vague indication of a possibly imminent uprising by the Wagner group against the Kremlin about a week earlier. The BND would have tried to verify this information in exchange with its partners. However, this was initially unsuccessful. Therefore, the Chancellery was not informed about this.
An initial warning from the BND about the impending events is said to have been sent to the federal government on the evening before the Prigozhin uprising.
The BND is said to have had insights into the internals of the Wagner Group since last year. According to information from WDR and NDR, the foreign secret service had apparently hacked into the troops’ internal communications and diligently read along. But then the BND employee Carsten L. is said to have betrayed the wiretapping operation to the Russian secret service. In the so-called “mole case” he soon faces charges of treason.
