Three Ukrainians accused of planning attacks in Germany on behalf of Russia | International

Germany adds a new case of attack in its territory. The German Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday reported the arrest of three Ukrainians accused of preparing sabotage acts against the transport of goods in the interior of the country by order of Russia. According to the investigation, they intended to send from Germany packages with explosive artifacts to recipients in Ukraine, which were supposedly to detonate during transport.

Vladyslav T. was arrested on May 9 in Colonia, and Daniil B. the next day in Constance. Both men are in preventive detention. Subsequently, on May 11, Yevhen B. was arrested in the Swiss Turgovia canton, the prosecution detailed in a press release. It is expected to be extradited to Germany shortly.

“The defendants are suspected of espionage activities for sabotage purposes,” said the authority in Karlsruhe. “In this context, they are also accused of being willing to commit a severe crime of caused fire and provoke a detonation with explosives.”

“To explore the appropriate transport routes, Vladyslav T. sent two test packages from Colonia at the end of March 2025, which contained, among other things, GPS trackers. The commission was made by Yevhen B., who provided the content of the packages through Daniil B.,” the German authorities detailed. According to the information available so far, the two detained in Germany had no professional activity.

For the German Minister of Justice, Stefanie Hubig, it is “a very serious matter.” “We know that Russia is trying by all means destabilizing Western democracies, even with selective sabotages and perfidious methods of secret services,” he said.

In the same line, Baden-Wurtemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl, who said that these arrests show that “Germany is being attacked by foreign states” and that “is in a state between war and peace.”

Meanwhile, his counterpart from North-Westfalia, Herbert Reul, said that this demonstrates “the new quality of hybrid threats” and recalled that intelligence services have long been warning of the increase in the danger of espionage and sabotage by Russia. “But we have also found that modus operandi From Russian intelligence services it has changed, ”he said.

He also pointed out that Russian secret services act “in a riskier and more aggressive way” and that they are no longer “trained agents of the old school, but the so -called ‘low -level agents’, which are recruited by little money.” For the German politician, the use of this type of agents opens “a huge new battlefield” to which Germany has to face.

This case adds to other orchestrated allegedly by Russia. In April 2024, Russian-German Dieter S. was arrested, accused of preparing attacks against military infrastructures and industrial centers and having spoken about it with a collaborator of the Russian secret services. According to the accusation, the attacks were aimed at undermining military support to Ukraine. The trial against S. and two alleged accomplices begins next Tuesday before the Regional Superior Court of Munich.

The Federal Intelligence Service (BND) – the Secret Services abroad -, the inspector general of the German army, General Carsten Breuer, and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BFV) – the secret services in the interior – have been warning about sabotage and espionage for some time.

The former president of the BFV Thomas Haldenwang declared the past autumn that in July a plane crash had been avoided after the fire of an air loading pack, a allegedly commission of Russia.

According to Haldenwang, it was only a happy coincidence that the package caught fire in the logistics center of the DHL messaging company in Leipzig and not during the flight. According to information from the German news agency DPA, luck was that the flight from the Baltic was delayed in Leipzig. The package contained a incendiary artifact that was activated there and caused the fire of a load container.

“We observed an aggressive attitude of Russian intelligence services,” said the then head of secret services in the interior of Germany and warned that espionage and sabotage by Moscow agents have increased in Germany, “both in quantity and quality.” In March, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution indicated several examples of alleged sabotage in recent months, including incidents in German warships, which are still being investigated.