BERLIN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2020) Berlin has completed preparing a list of Russian citizens and legal entities that it hopes to target with cyber sanctions related to alleged hacking activity, Foreign Ministry spokesman Christopher Burger said on Wednesday.
"We have made a list of Russian citizens and legal entities that fall under the framework of the EU cyber sanctions mechanism. We are actively taking steps within the EU, in relation to the 26 other member states," Burger said at a press briefing, adding that he would provide no further details at this stage.
In late May, Russia's Ambassador in Berlin Sergey Nechaev was summoned to the German Foreign Office over an alleged 2015 hacking attack on the country's parliament. Berlin has named Dmitry Badin, who it believes to be a military intelligence officer, as the lead suspect in the attack.
Since then, the German government has threatened to impose so-called cyber sanctions on Russia, following the European Council's adoption in May 2019 of a mechanism to respond to hacking incidents.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in May said that Berlin had yet to provide any evidence to suggest that Moscow was involved in the 2015 hack, which saw the emails of Bundestag lawmakers compromised.
Andrey Krutskikh, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of International Information Security, has called for mutual dialogue between Berlin and Moscow to address the ongoing grievances.
