BERLIN: Germany said Friday it had identified two Russian cyber operations, targeting air traffic control and February's general election, and that it had summoned the Russian ambassador.

A foreign ministry spokesman said: "We can now clearly attribute the cyberattack against German Air Safety in August 2024 to the hacker collective APT28, also known as Fancy Bear.

"Second, we can now state definitively that Russia, through the Storm 1516 campaign, sought to influence and destabilise the most recent federal election," he added at a press conference.

The Russian embassy in Berlin was not immediately reachable for comment.

The foreign ministry spokesman said that Germany "would take a series of countermeasures to make Russia pay a price for its hybrid actions in close coordination with our European partners".

Berlin would support "new individual sanctions against hybrid actors on a European level", he said, without providing further details.

Governments across Europe are on high alert over alleged Russian espionage, drone surveillance and sabotage activities, as well as cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns.

Germany has been Ukraine's second-biggest supplier of aid since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and has accused Moscow of "hybrid attacks", including drone flights near various European airports in recent months.

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Germany blames Russia for cyberattack on air safety, election interference