German intelligence tried to recruit a Russian activist at Berlin airport, anti-war group says. She refused — and was later barred from entering the Schengen area.

German authorities barred a Russian activist from entering the Schengen area after she refused to cooperate with German intelligence, according to Andrei Pivovarov, a representative of the “Consuls of the Russian Anti-War Committee.”After the woman arrived at a Berlin airport and passed through passport control, representatives of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) invited her to a conversation and asked her to sign a cooperation agreement, Pivovarov said. She refused.The activist then ended up on a list of people barred from entering the Schengen area. It is unclear whether there is a direct link between the two events or whether the ban was related to something else, and there is no independent confirmation of the information.The independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo reported that the incident at the Berlin airport took place several months earlier. The activist only learned of the entry ban the next time she tried to enter the Schengen area, in another country, when she was given a document naming Germany as the initiator of the ban and citing a “threat to national security” as the reason.A few days earlier, the independent Russian outlet Holod and the independent Russian investigative outlet iStories reported on several cases at a Berlin airport where Russians were invited to conversations about the situation in Russia and their views on the war in Ukraine. German police later said the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) handles this work.Under Russian law, confidential cooperation with foreign states directed against Russia’s security carries criminal liability of up to eight years in prison.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.