Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (left) and Defense Minister Mario Kunasek held a press conference on Friday after the arrest was announced.

BRUSSELS — A retired colonel in the Austrian army can remain free until his trial on charges of spying for Russia for over 25 years, a court in Salzburg ruled Tuesday.



Prosecutors had wanted to keep the unnamed veteran behind bars after he was arrested Friday evening and later charged with spying for Russia from 1992.

But the court rejected arguments that the officer was a flight risk, and cited his strong national and family ties to the country, as well as the fact he is retired.

The charges have caused huge embarrassment for Austria’s hard-right government.

“According to our information this activity may have begun in the 1990s and continued until the year 2018,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told reporters Friday. “That means there’s a case of espionage here.”

This summer Austria was one of the few European Union countries not to expel Russian diplomats and suspected intelligence officers in response to the accusations that Russia attempted to murder a former agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter with a nerve agent in the UK. Both survived the attack, but a woman later died after being exposed to residual nerve agents UK prosecutors say were used in the attack.


Justifying its decision at the time, Austria cited its longstanding principles of neutrality stemming from the Cold War. Despite mounting pressure from the UK, France, and Germany to distance itself from Russia, Vienna is arguably Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strongest ally in the EU.

“Austria has been a problem for everyone,” a NATO military intelligence officer, who cannot be identified, told BuzzFeed News. “The current government has deep ideological and economic links to the Putin regime and has been trying to have it both ways: Solid member of the EU plus close friend of Putin isn’t going to work post-Skripal.”