Suspicion of espionage
Germans are said to have planned sabotage for Russia
According to the Federal Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice, those arrested are strongly suspected of having worked for a foreign secret service in a particularly serious case. photo
© Uli Deck/dpa
The Federal Prosecutor General has had two Germans from Russia arrested. They are suspected of espionage. Acts of sabotage were also said to have been planned. Both must now be in custody.
After the arrest of two men in Bavaria who were… Both suspects are said to have spied on Russia and scouted out possible attack targets in Germany. An investigating judge also executed the second arrest warrant, said a spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe. According to the information, the two are strongly suspected of having worked for a foreign secret service in a particularly serious case.
According to the Federal Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice, the two Germans from Russia were concerned with sabotage actions that were intended in particular to “undermine the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression.”
The older of the two, Dieter S., is also accused of conspiring to cause an explosive explosion and arson, as well as acting as an agent for sabotage purposes and depicting military installations in a way that endangers security.
The two Russian-born men who were arrested in Bayreuth on Wednesday reportedly both have German and Russian citizenship. Investigators searched the couple’s place of residence and work in the Bayreuth region.
Willingness to sabotage signaled
Specifically, Dieter S. is said to have been communicating with someone connected to a Russian secret service about possible sabotage operations since at least October last year. He is said to have declared to his interlocutor that he was prepared to carry out explosives and arson attacks, especially on infrastructure used by the military and industrial sites in Germany. According to the Federal Prosecutor General, Dieter S. collected information about potential attack targets, including facilities of the US armed forces. The second accused, Alexander J., helped him from March 2024 at the latest.
According to information from the German Press Agency, the locations scouted include the US base in Grafenwöhr and other military facilities in Bavaria. The “Spiegel” reported first. Dieter S. is said to have spied out and photographed some of the objects targeted on site, such as military transport. However, according to reports, an attack on one of the objects was not imminent.
Germany is also in the focus of the Russian secret service
“We know that the Russian power apparatus is also focusing on our country,” said Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP). Germany must respond to this threat defensively and decisively.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) spoke of a particularly serious case of suspected spy activity for Russia. She emphasized: “We will continue to provide massive support to Ukraine and will not allow ourselves to be intimidated.”
The accused is said to have fought for separatists in Donbass
According to the Federal Prosecutor General, Dieter S. is also strongly suspected of having joined an armed unit as a fighter in the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, which is classified as a foreign terrorist organization. He is said to have been active for this pro-Russian organization in eastern Ukraine between December 2014 and September 2016 and to have had a firearm. In 2014, separatists loyal to Moscow broke away from Kiev after the fall of Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych. The new pro-Western leadership in Kiev then tried in vain to regain control of Donetsk and other towns in Donbass with a military operation.
Other cases in the past
It is not the first suspected espionage case that has caught the attention of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office: a former employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is currently on trial in Berlin. The federal prosecutor’s office accuses him and a businessman of treason in a particularly serious case. They are said to have given secret documents and information from the German foreign intelligence service to the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB in September and October 2022. According to the indictment, they received an “agent’s wage” of 450,000 euros or 400,000 euros. The two Germans are in custody.
Last August, a professional soldier who worked at the Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Use of the Bundeswehr was arrested in Koblenz. The facility is responsible for equipping the Bundeswehr with materials and weapons as well as the development, testing and procurement of military technology. From May 2023, the man is said to have offered cooperation to the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian Embassy in Berlin several times.
“It remains urgent to bring together evidence of various operations, to recognize the holistic strategy behind them and to analyze the resulting patterns in order to defend ourselves and assert ourselves against them,” said the chairman of the Parliamentary Control Committee, Konstantin von Notz (Greens).