Construction workers find an explosives depot near a NATO pipeline in Rhineland-Palatinate – it is unclear who created it. But German and European security authorities have long been warning that Russia does not shy away from sabotage.
The small town of Bellheim with its 9,000 inhabitants is located somewhere in the middle of nowhere between Landau, Speyer and Karlsruhe. Half-timbered streets, parks, two church towers, the “Via Rhenana”, an old Roman road along the Upper Rhine, runs through the district. There is nothing to suggest that the location could be of military strategic importance. But one of the largest NATO tank farms in Germany is located in Bellheim. And this is also where the Central Europe Pipeline System (CEPS) runs, which, as part of the so-called NATO pipeline, has been supplying the air force bases in western Germany with kerosene, gasoline and diesel since the Cold War. In an emergency, the tubes would be of strategic importance.