Russia buys ‘Trojan horse’ homes near military bases across Europe
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/23/russian-spies-buy-homes-close-military-sites-europe-kremlin/
Posted by Miao_Yin8964
Russia buys ‘Trojan horse’ homes near military bases across Europe
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/23/russian-spies-buy-homes-close-military-sites-europe-kremlin/
Posted by Miao_Yin8964
19 Comments
>Russian spies have turned properties across Western Europe into a network of “Trojan horses” designed to unleash a co-ordinated sabotage campaign, intelligence officials have warned.
>Exploiting weak legal frameworks, clandestine Russian units are suspected of purchasing sensitive real estate close to military and civilian sites in at least a dozen European nations.
Paywall 🤷♂️
Common knowledge since the 90’s at least. At least in Finland even the common folk already know where the lots are, and the government blocks most of the attempts.
In the 1980s Frederick Forsyth wrote a novel about these, which was turned into a film starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol_(film)
In the real world there have been discoveries of Soviet weapons caches in Western Europe, intended for Spetsnaz sabotage and terrorist acts.
Well if they know where they are…terrible if there were accidents.
Well, if we know they are trojan horses, then we can burn em down when the time comes and not pull em inside the city walls. That’s the nice about spy craft, you never know if the other one knows the other one knows and there the thing you see, is the the thing you see or the thing you should see to not see the other thing… Note to self, need to read the fourth protocol again
Russians used to own much of Mayfair and Belgravia some are still there I presume.
Ok, so we know where to look, who goes in, who goes out and russia expends resources maintaining a blown cover…
Homes for citizens only.
In Switzerland there was a recent affair of Chinese intelligence buying houses and hotels close to air bases destined to host f35. (It is implied it’s been going on for many years and everyone knew)
As Switzerland is completely incapable of enforcing anything apart car speeding, it seems Swiss intelligence knew this since a long time but never did anything about it. Airfield is almost unprotected with few personnel and just perimeter cow fence only (I suppose some landscape protection law forbids anything else).
This would have made Swiss F35s the most unprotected in the world. The US refused to sell them before Chinese got taken care of.
They kindly were asked to leave and they left…
Missed a golden opportunity to call them Trojan houses
Oh great! Sending our house prices even higher! Is there no end of misery the Russians are willing to inflict on us? Now it is capital gains!
i mean we can just confiscate them, free money right there
I’m increasingly seeing trucks parked under bridges overnight in Germany. Is this happening elsewhere in Europe?
China does that too, as demonstrated in a recent [affair](https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/une-ressortissante-chinoise-soupconnee-d-espionnage-avait-une-antenne-de-7-metres-dans-son-jardin-de-haute-garonne-20250808) when a Chinese lady involved in missile development had installed a 7-meter antenna near a military site in South-Western France.
Why goverments doesn’t remove those properties? I don’t understand why we are being so naive and willing to do so. Is it corruption? Do Chinese and Russians pay to politicians in Europe so they can do whatever they want?
Do they have citizenship? If not, why can they buy property?
These should just be raided and seized in the interests of national security. Russia only understands force.
I was stationed in Germany and there was a line of houses that we called “Embassy Row”. The very few times we’d see people they were obvious AF and every nationality you could think of.