Austria's domestic intelligence agency, the DSN, has provided the government with a list of individuals it has identified as operators of Russia's secret signals intelligence stations in Vienna. But Austrian officials believe acting on the information would only provoke Moscow, the Financial Times has reported.
The reluctance persists despite the DSN's own public warning that Russian SIGINT capabilities in the city "pose a significant security risk in counter-espionage," as "Hvylya" reports, citing the FT. The Austrian interior ministry declined to comment beyond the findings of the most recent DSN report.
The legal framework reinforces the inertia. Under Austrian law, espionage cannot be prosecuted unless it is carried out against Austrian national interest. Since Russia's primary targets in Vienna are NATO and other foreign communications, its operatives effectively enjoy legal immunity - even as they run what western officials describe as the Kremlin's largest covert signals intelligence platform in the West.
Austria's neutrality - it is not a NATO member - has historically shaped its approach to Russian intelligence activity. While the 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted diplomatic expulsions from most European countries, Vienna chose a more permissive path regarding Moscow's presence. Russia still maintains around 500 diplomatic staff in the city, with up to a third believed to be covert intelligence operatives.
Behind the scenes, however, Austria has been working to repair its security relationships with European partners. An Austrian security official told the FT that diplomatic expulsions may not be on the table, but "that does not mean that there are not other ways in which Austria can help deter and disrupt Russian activity hostile to European interests." A significant amount of information about Russian operations in Vienna is being shared with allies, the official said.
Major intelligence powers all collect signals intelligence in Vienna, noted Thomas Riegler, an Austrian historian specializing in espionage. "The Russians just do it very openly, and often in quite a crude way." That openness, he added, comes from a position of confidence. In the intelligence world, as one official put it, "it was sometimes better to watch than to act."