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Diplomat blasts European Parliament’s silence on US, Danish eavesdropping scandal

Maria Zakharova also noted that there was no response from the EP on the grounding of a Ryanair flight in Berlin on May 30

MOSCOW, June 10. /TASS/. The European Parliament is not responding at all to a report that US and Danish special services tapped European politicians’ phones, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told YouTube channel Solovyov Live on Thursday.

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"Where is the European Parliament? This is a particular issue of yours, this is directly related to the field of the EP’s activity, because European countries were subject to a cyber attack, cyber espionage, and these are absolutely unacceptable and illegal steps by a state, which is not European. The reaction is zero," Zakharova said.

The diplomat also noted that there was no response from the European Parliament on the grounding of a Ryanair flight in Berlin on May 30. "Dear MEPs, don’t you want to speak about this? Not to condemn it, but at least to draw some parallels or compare the situations and ask yourselves a question: what’s the difference and similarity between such stories? Zakharova said, commenting on a recent call by the EP to expand sanctions against Belarus over the incident with the emergency landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk and "investigate Russia’s" role in this situation.

On May 31, the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the ARD and WDR TV companies, as well as a number of media outlets in Denmark and Sweden reported that in 2013 Danish intelligence collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) in spying on European politicians. According to media reports, the espionage agencies in question used a facility located near Copenhagen for wiretapping activities. The NSA scandal broke in 2013, when Der Spiegel published revelations by former CIA employee Edward Snowden. Since then, more and more details about the story have surfaced. As it turned out, US intelligence had been spying on thousands of targets in Europe, eavesdropping on German citizens and even tapping into German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone several times.

In November 2020, the NSA’s espionage activities at Swedish defense facilities was uncovered. The monitoring was carried out from a US base in Denmark. Intelligence showed interest in Sweden’s SAAB and Denmark’s Terma. According to journalists, the NSA obtained access to optical fibers on the Danish island of Amager, which enabled them to monitor the traffic of data from the Netherlands, Norway, France, Germany, Danish political institutes and "Swedish military." Some data claimed that one of the targets of the spy mission was the program of Sweden’s fourth-generation fighter jet Gripen.

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