As The Insider and Der Spiegel have learned, Germany has expelled Andrei Mayorov, Russia’s deputy military attaché in the country, accusing him of espionage. Mayorov was identified as the handler of Ilona Kopylova (Wiener), a citizen of Russia, Ukraine, and Germany, who was earlier arrested in Berlin.
Despite his surname, Mayorov held the rank of colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency — a fact that was unlikely to have been a secret to German authorities, as the roles of military attaché and their deputies at Russian embassies are traditionally filled by officers of Russian military intelligence. According to data available to The Insider, Mayorov previously served as a paratrooper from the Pskov Region and later worked at the GRU’s 162nd Center for Military-Technical Information.
Ilona Kopylova-Wiener, 56, was born in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. In Germany she headed the consulting firm Wiener & Partner. A well-connected networker, Wiener regularly met with prominent German business leaders and politicians. Photographs show her alongside lawmakers from the leadership of Germany’s leading political parties and even standing behind Friedrich Merz during his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. German state investigators have said that she regularly passed the information she gathered to Russian intelligence. According to the investigation, she sought details about the participants in a NATO conference that was held in 2023 at Berlin’s Hotel Adlon. Investigators also believe that she may have brought Mayorov to some of these events under a false name.
Likely with recruitment in mind, Wiener became acquainted with Walter Storz, a former head of the German Air Force’s 61st Test and Evaluation Center, and with a retired Air Force officer identified as Uwe V., who had served at Büchel Air Base. The base is considered to be one of the Bundeswehr’s most sensitive facilities, as it stores U.S. nuclear bombs assigned to the German Air Force. It remains unclear whether Wiener obtained any valuable information from the two men. Searches were carried out at their apartments, and their mobile phones were seized, but neither was detained. Storz served as a trustee of a nonprofit organization headed by Wiener, and Weiner used her connection to him to gain access to events linked to Europe’s defense industry.