A Russian national who worked in the parliamentary office of prominent German lawmaker Christian Hirte is pushing back against the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung after the newspaper claimed that he has ties to Russia’s secret service. In an article published on March 12, the German newspaper reported that a Russian citizen who worked for Hirte named “Konstantin K.” had long been suspected of collaborating with the FSB, and that this had been confirmed by a German security agency. The investigative outlet iStories later identified the Russian national in question as Konstantin Khrapov. In a Telegram channel set up to address the allegations, Khrapov attributed the FAZ article to political infighting in Germany and argued that the newspaper hadn’t presented any evidence to corroborate its claims. Here’s what we know about the story of “Konstantin K.”
On March 12, the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported that a Russian national with ties to the FSB worked in the parliamentary office of prominent German lawmaker Christian Hirte from March 2023 until the end of 2024. The German newspaper identified the Russian national as “Konstantin K.” and cited several anonymous sources who had “long suspected” him of collaborating with Russia’s secret service. According to the FAZ, a German security agency also confirmed K.’s connections to the FSB.
The investigative outlet iStories later identified the Russian national in question as Konstantin Khrapov. In turn, The Insider reported that according to the caller identification app GetContact, Khrapov’s contact information is saved in several users’ phones as “Scammer, FSB snitch.”
‘Connected to the system’
According to FAZ’s reporting, K.’s résumé is full of connections to Vladimir Putin’s government. From 2014 to 2016, he worked for a “non-governmental organization” that handled relations with the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia on behalf of Putin’s administration, and he also held other positions in associations and youth organizations controlled by the Russian government.
In 2020, K. began working for the Moscow office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation — which is how he met Hirte, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has served in the German Bundestag since 2008. According to FAZ, Hirte “had long shown a keen interest in Russia,” traveled there for conferences, and was friends with the former director of the Adenauer Foundation’s Moscow office, Lars Peter Schmidt.
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Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, K. contacted Hirte to explain that he had fled abroad; the lawmaker then offered him a job in his parliamentary office after the two met in Berlin. “I had the impression that he was clearly opposed to the Putin regime,” Hirte told FAZ. Nevertheless, Hirte sent K.’s résumé to a German security agency, he said, “because I knew he was connected to the system in Russia.”
Hirte received a tip about K.’s possible FSB connections in mid-2023 but was asked not to terminate his employment right away so as not to arouse suspicion. The lawmaker was finally advised to “quietly” fire K. in “late summer/early autumn 2024,” and he allowed K.’s contract to expire at the end of the year.
Though K.’s Bundestag ID card would have allowed him access to the German parliament until the end of 2024, Hirte told FAZ that the Russian national was never involved in the internal workings of his parliamentary office. “He had no key to the office, no digital access, and no access to internal office data or that of the Bundestag,” the lawmaker said.
Instead, K. maintained contact with exiled Russian opposition figures — including former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky — and wrote papers for Hirte about the Russian opposition and current affairs in Russia. A spokesman for Khodorkovsky told FAZ that given his past involvement with the Putin regime, they were “always cautious” when dealing with K.
‘Ready to give testimony’
According to iStories, the outlet that identified “K.,” Konstantin Khrapov also worked with the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe (CASE), an E.U.-based think tank focused on post-Soviet countries and the Russian diaspora. The CASE website lists its founders as Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, former State Duma lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov, and Russian economist and politician Dmitry Nekrasov.
After the FAZ article came out, Gudkov wrote on Telegram that Khrapov did not work for the think tank but “provided services for organizing presentations and promoting some CASE reports, including in the Bundestag and a number of ministries.” According to Gudkov, CASE’s “interaction” with Khrapov took place when he worked in the Bundestag, as well as during his time at the Adenauer Foundation’s Moscow office.
Gudkov added that the think tank had “no reason to doubt” Hirte’s claim that Khrapov appeared to oppose the Putin regime and that German security services had done a background check. “We consider this publication to be part of the political struggle within the Bundestag during the formation of the new government and would rather not take anyone’s side,” he said.
Khrapov himself made a similar argument in a lengthy Telegram post dated March 12, claiming the FAZ article was the product of CDU infighting amid the formation of the new German Cabinet. “The authors’ conclusions [...] are based solely on [the line in] my biography from ten years ago about my work for a pro-government project in Abkhazia (which, by the way, I never hid, not while I was in Russia nor after arriving in Germany),” Khrapov wrote.
Khrapov said that while he “helped establish contacts” between CDU lawmakers and Russian opposition figures, he had “no access to any sensitive information” while working in Hirte’s office. He also claimed that the Bundestag and German security services didn’t find anything in their background checks and that he hasn’t received any inquiries from German law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
“The article doesn’t provide a single piece of evidence or confirmation that I have any kind of ‘connection’ with the Russian intelligence services. For my part, I’m ready to give testimony to Germany’s state security agencies, if anyone is interested, of course. Although I strongly doubt this, since I’m sure the publication wasn’t aimed at me personally but at my former boss,” he concluded.
Khrapov later told The Insider that he plans to contact German law enforcement “to dispel public suspicions.”
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