The reduced Russian diplomatic mission did not apply to the Lithuanian authorities for the renewal of the radio communications permit this year. However, in April 2022, in response to Russia’s massacre in Ukraine’s Bucha, Lithuania sent away Russian ambassador Alexei Isakov and closed the Russian consulate in Klaipėda, which employed 14 people. The Russian Embassy in Vilnius has until recently been known as a “training ground” for Russian intelligence officers. The LRT Investigation Team, together with international partners, has analysed the Russian intelligence network in Europe, revealing the identities and activities of spies who operated in Lithuania for several years. This article was amended on 22 March 2017 to clarify references to the BND and the Gehlen Organisation.After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a number of Russian spies operating under diplomatic cover have been expelled from Lithuania. Or she managed to keep a close relationship with both regimes.Ī postcard dated November 1940 that she wrote to Hitler in which she thanks him profusely for a bouquet of flowers he sent her is on display in Berlin’s film museum. The two-year work ban imposed on her at the end of the second world war as punishment for the close relationship she had with the inner circle of the Nazi leadership may have helped her keep up the pretence. She was for years considered to have been anti-communist. Neither is it known whether any attempts were made to prevent her from continuing. It is not known if Rökk ever knew she was under suspicion for espionage. She often starred alongside Johannes Heesters in propaganda films, and was said to bring a degree of exoticism to her roles with a light Hungarian accent. She shot to fame in 1935 after starring in Leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry), becoming one of the most prolific stars of her time. She was considered to be one of Hitler’s favourite actors and is reported to have had an affair with his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Rökk was groomed by the Nazi regime to offer the Third Reich public homegrown acting talent to compete with the likes of Hollywood stars Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth. Newspapers at the time said that she wanted to devote herself to running a boutique selling authentic Swiss woollenware in Düsseldorf.īut west German intelligence concluded the plan was a “clever chess-move cover” allowing her to continue to spy for the Soviets. In 1951 Rökk announced she was giving up her acting career after 16 years. In a file published by the tabloid Bild that had been classified top secret for 50 years, but which has just been released, Rökk’s “connections to Russian intelligence posts” – as Bild put it – are laid bare. Rökk’s role as a Soviet spy was uncovered by the Gehlen Organisation, the West German agency which preceded Germany’s current foreign intelligence agency, the BND, and first made a formal note of its suspicions in its records in November 1951. His network of about 35 agents included bankers, military officials and secretaries, as well as the actor Olga Chekhova. Chernyak himself was recruited by Soviet military intelligence while studying in Berlin in the 1940s. The network was led by the legendary Soviet agent Yan Chernyak, nicknamed the “man without a shadow” for his ability to move around undetected. Krona, the network of agents she was a member of, was responsible for passing on high-class military intelligence, including plans for Operation Barbarossa and the Battle of Kursk. Her husband, the film director Georg Jacoby, is thought to have spied alongside her. Heinz Hoffmeister, who recruited Rökk, seen here in a car with Maria Callas in 1959.
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