Two males have been arrested in Germany over suspicions that they spied for Russia and have been a part of a plot to sabotage help to Ukraine by attempting to explode army infrastructure on German soil, the authorities introduced on Thursday.
The 2 males, each twin residents of Russia and Germany, have been arrested on Wednesday in Bayreuth, a metropolis about 120 miles north of Munich, German federal prosecutors mentioned. The arrests got here as worries develop in Germany concerning the attain of Russian intelligence and disruption operations.
One of many males had been in touch with Russian intelligence companies and had thought of a U.S. army base in Germany as one in every of a number of potential targets, in response to federal prosecutors based mostly in Karlsruhe, in southwestern Germany, who oversaw the arrests.
The 2 males haven’t been formally charged. However the federal prosecutors mentioned that the pair have been suspected of working for a international intelligence service and, in a single man’s case, of illegally taking footage of army infrastructure and of planning explosive assaults and arson.
In an announcement on Thursday, Nancy Faeser, Germany’s inside minister, condemned a “significantly severe case of suspected agent exercise” tied to the “legal regime” of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Relations between Moscow and Berlin have soured since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Final 12 months, Germany closed down 4 Russian consulates after Moscow restricted the variety of German diplomatic workers allowed to remain in Russia.
“The allegation that Putin is recruiting brokers in Germany to hold out assaults on German soil is extraordinarily severe,” Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s international minister, mentioned in statement on X after summoning the Russian ambassador in Berlin.
“We won’t permit Putin to deliver his terror to Germany,” she mentioned.
In an announcement on its web site, the Russian embassy in Berlin denied the allegations, calling them an “outright provocation aimed toward inciting the already rampant spy mania in Germany, rising the diploma of anti-Russian sentiment” and “additional destroying Russian-German relations.”
In step with German privateness guidelines, the 2 males arrested have been recognized solely as Dieter S. and Alexander J. The police raided their workplaces and their properties on Wednesday.
Prosecutors didn’t launch any particulars about their professions however mentioned that Dieter S. was suspected of getting fought in jap Ukraine from 2014 to 2016 for a separatist group, the Folks’s Republic of Donetsk, which has shut hyperlinks to the Kremlin.
Dieter S. had been in contact with a member of an unnamed Russian intelligence service and had communicated with that contact in October about “doable sabotage acts,” in response to the prosecutors.
Germany is the most important European donor of army help to Ukraine and is second globally solely to the US, with 32 billion euros, about $34 billion, of help delivered or promised since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Dieter S. supplied to hold out assaults by planting explosives at army infrastructure and industrial websites tied to that help, federal prosecutors mentioned, though they didn’t title any particular places.
He did reconnaissance work by taking footage and movies of army tools and army transports, prosecutors mentioned, but it surely was not instantly clear how far he had gotten in getting ready any assault.
Dieter S. additionally did reconnaissance of a U.S. army base in Germany, federal prosecutors mentioned, although they didn’t title any particular set up or say whether or not an assault had been deliberate.
The second man arrested, Alexander J., appeared to have joined Dieter S. final month on the newest to assist spy on infrastructure websites, prosecutors mentioned.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there have been different situations of Germans being accused of spying — or of trying to spy — for Russian intelligence. In a single case, at the moment on trial in Berlin, a supervisor at Germany’s home intelligence company is suspected of promoting categorised details about the conflict in Ukraine to Russia.
In one other case, a former soldier working as a civilian for the army was arrested final 12 months after he contacted a Russian consulate in Germany with a proposal to disclose categorised info.
The arrests this week got here amid heightened safety at lots of Germany’s crucial infrastructure websites within the wake of the sabotage of gasoline pipelines within the Baltic Sea in September 2022. Intelligence reviewed by U.S. officers suggests {that a} pro-Ukrainian group carried out the assault on the pipeline, a part of which is in Germany.
Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.
