MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. It was no news for the Kremlin that Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who maintains friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been under NSA’s surveillance, which fact has recently been revealed in the German mass media, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

"We have been aware of that for a long time," he told journalists when asked to comment on the spying campaign conducted by US National Security Agency (NSA).

The presidential spokesman said Putin had been maintaining friendly contacts with Schroeder even after he had resigned from the post.

Germany’s Bild am Sonntag reported citing US security services that Schroeder was NSA’s espionage target as a chair of the shareholders committee of the Nord Stream operator. Moreover, according to the newspaper, the US security services were interested in Schroeder’s contacts with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Earlier, Wikileaks said NSA has been wiretapping the German chancellor’s administration for decades. Wikileaks made public the list of NSA’s surveillance targets in the German government, which along with the current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, included member of her cabinet and her predecessors Gerhard Schroeder and Helmut Kohl.