A former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has warned that the discovery of two men suspected of plotting sabotage attacks on military facilities in the country could be just the “tip of the iceberg”.
After the arrest of the Russian-German citizens Dieter S and Alexander J on Wednesday, who are alleged to have been operating as spies on behalf of the Kremlin, Gerhard Schindler, the former chief of the BND, the equivalent of MI6, said it would be naive to see the incident as an isolated one.
“Warlike confrontations are always the hour of spies,” he told the news network RND. “Russia has therefore been continuously ramping up its intelligence operations in recent years, not just in Ukraine, but in the west in general.”
He said espionage and sabotage were an integral part of the “standard toolbox of Russian geopolitics”. The secret service activities in Germany exposed by this week’s arrests, he said, were “from that point of view no surprise. Rather, it’s the tip of the iceberg.”
The men arrested in the Bavarian city of Bayreuth are being held in custody. Prosecutors in Karlsruhe have accused them of planning acts of sabotage in particular at military sites in Germany, including a US military base used to train Ukrainian soldiers in the operation of Abrams tanks.
During searches of the men’s homes and workplaces, evidence was allegedly found that they had carried out surveillance on a variety of sites and transport routes used by the military, with a view to carrying out explosive attacks on them.
In a separate incident in Poland on Wednesday a man was arrested for his alleged supporting role in Russian plans to assassinate the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to Polish and Ukrainian prosecutors.
The man had allegedly gathered information about security measures at Rzeszów airport in south-east Poland and passed it on to Russian intelligence. The airport, which is under the control of US troops, has been an important stopover for diplomatic journeys since the 2022 escalation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as a crucial part of the infrastructure for delivering weapons.
Germany’s government has reacted to the arrest of the German-Russian citizens by presenting a united front and condemning what the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, called an “extremely serious” case, amid evidence that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is “recruiting agents from us to carry out attacks on German soil”.
“We will not allow Putin to bring his terror to Germany,” she said.
But opposition politicians have accused the administration of Olaf Scholz of sleeping at the wheel, and have demanded more effort be put into tackling Russian secret service activity in Germany.
“Russia is becoming ever more aggressive in its espionage in Germany,” Johann Wadephul from the Christian Democrats told RND. “This latest incident has to be a wake-up call for our security authorities, most especially the military counterintelligence service.”
He said that military sites were a particular target of such espionage activity and should be more tightly regulated, calling on the defence minister, Boris Pistorius, and the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, to “make counterintelligence a top priority” and “do everything possible to prevent damage to the German military and our allies”.
The deputy head of the Bundestag’s parliamentary control committee, Roderich Kiesewetter, also of the CDU, said: “The powers of our intelligence services must be examined with regard to the question as to whether they are still fit for purpose, in view of the threats of espionage and sabotage. We also have to check the visa policy, because many Russian agents are here [in Germany] on tourist visas.”
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the head of Germany’s defence committee, warned against paranoia, but said authorities needed to step up their pursuit of people who were actively recruiting Russian agents on German soil.
“Whilst they should not be looking behind every bush suspecting to find something horrible, the danger is absolutely real that Putin is recruiting Russian citizens, dual citizens and citizens of Russian origin,” she told Bild. Germany, she said, had been “far too naive” about this in the past.
Alexander J’s mother, with whom he was living with at the time of his arrest, expressed her shock on hearing the news of her son’s alleged activities.
She told Bild he had been “obsessed” with the computer strategy game Panzer Rush. Investigators are reportedly looking into the theory that he might have used the game’s internal chat function to communicate with Russian intelligence agents.
Meanwhile, Sergei Nechaev, Russia’s ambassador to Berlin, who was summoned to the foreign ministry on Thursday and asked to explain the men’s activities, denied any knowledge of the plots, calling the allegations “absurd and ridiculous” and saying that the foreign ministry had not produced any proof to back them up.
On X after the meeting he wrote: “No unfriendly action against Russia will remain without consequence.”
