How Cristiano Ronaldo's YouTube videos became a communication tool for Russian President Putin's spies

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spies have found new ways to contact the Kremlin. And it involves soccer legend Cristiano Ronaldo and his viral YouTube videos.

This stunning discovery became apparent after the imprisonment of the Anschlag couple (not real names) in Germany after they were found guilty of being Russian spies, reports bein sports.

For 23 years, the Anschlags received 100,000 euros a year from Russia to spy on events in the West and report back to Moscow.

It was revealed that spies had transmitted thousands of state secrets to Russia and the Soviet Union over the past two decades.

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At first, a detail in the Dutch foreign ministry helped them get away with the crime using some innovative techniques, including secret letterboxes and USBs.

Meanwhile, the spy couple used radio and satellites to send reports to the Kremlin. However, with the advent of the internet, the spies invented ingenious new ways to report back to Moscow: YouTube.

The couple created a YouTube account with the username @Aplenkuh1 in early 2011, while the Kremlin created a similar profile with the username @crsitanofootballer.

Former BBC Security Correspondent Gordon Corera, in his book The Russians Among Us, revealed how the spies used their fake YouTube profiles to leave comments on videos about Cristiano Ronaldo, who was playing for Real Madrid at the time. This was their ideal way of communicating with the Kremlin, it reports. BRAND.

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“The YouTube platform created another new way of communicating,” Corera writes. “The couple and SVR created accounts a few months apart in early 2011, which commented on videos, mainly about footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.”

"They wrote: 'It's a very nice video and the song is also very good.' This is a response from the SVR account called 'crsitanofootballer', saying: 'He runs and plays like the devil.'"

"This, German investigators believe, was a means of communication hiding in plain sight amidst all the noise on the world's largest video platform. The comments included a sequence of punctuation marks that could be converted into numbers, which would then refer to a pre-agreed message."

"This was the next step from the famous number stations, public radio broadcasts to spies and illegals in code, which have been used by the Russians and other countries for decades and can still be heard," Corera further emphasized.

Ronaldo wasn't even on YouTube until late 2024 when he launched his channel UR Cristiano. The channel now has over 74 million subscribers.

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The Anschlags were eventually tracked down by German special intelligence forces and eventually imprisoned. The couple were seen on their last day in court before being sentenced.

After spending time in a German prison, the Anschlags were eventually deported to Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked in February 2022, killing thousands and displacing millions. Three years later, the war between Russia and Ukraine continues with thousands of lives lost every day on the front lines. /Telegraph/