Germany Arrests 2 in Spying and Sabotage Case Linked to Russia

Two men have been arrested in Germany over suspicions that they spied for Russia and were part of a plot to sabotage aid to Ukraine by trying to blow up military infrastructure on German soil, the authorities announced on Thursday.

The two men, both dual citizens of Russia and Germany, were arrested on Wednesday in Bayreuth, a city about 120 miles north of Munich, German federal prosecutors said. The arrests came as worries grow in Germany about the reach of Russian intelligence and disruption operations.

One of the men had been in contact with Russian intelligence services and had considered a U.S. military base in Germany as one of several potential targets, according to federal prosecutors based in Karlsruhe, in southwestern Germany, who oversaw the arrests.

The two men have not been formally charged. But the federal prosecutors said that the pair were suspected of working for a foreign intelligence service and, in one man’s case, of illegally taking pictures of military infrastructure and of planning explosive attacks and arson.

In a statement on Thursday, Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, condemned a “particularly serious case of suspected agent activity” tied to the “criminal regime” of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, relations between Moscow and Berlin have soured. Last year, Germany closed down four Russian consulates after Moscow limited the number of German diplomatic staff allowed to stay in Russia.

In keeping with German privacy rules, the two men arrested were identified only as Dieter S. and Alexander J. The police raided their workplaces and their homes on Wednesday.

Prosecutors did not release any details about their professions but said that Dieter S. was suspected of having fought in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2016 for a separatist group, the People’s Republic of Donetsk, which has close links to the Kremlin.

Dieter S. had been in touch with a member of an unnamed Russian intelligence service and had communicated with that contact in October about “possible sabotage acts,” according to the prosecutors.

Germany is the biggest European donor of military aid to Ukraine and is second globally only to the United States, with 32 billion euros, about $34 billion, of aid delivered or promised since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Dieter S. offered to carry out attacks by planting explosives at military infrastructure and industrial sites tied to that aid, federal prosecutors said, although they did not name any specific locations.

He did reconnaissance work by taking pictures and videos of military equipment and military transports, prosecutors said, but it was not immediately clear how far he had gotten in preparing any attack.

Dieter S. also did reconnaissance of a U.S. military base in Germany, federal prosecutors said, though they did not name any specific installation or whether an attack had been planned.

The second man arrested, Alexander J., appeared to have joined Dieter S. last month at the latest to help spy on infrastructure sites, prosecutors said.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there have been other instances of Germans being accused of spying — or attempting to spy — for Russian intelligence. In one case, currently on trial in Berlin, a manager at Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is suspected of selling classified information about the war in Ukraine to Russia.

In another case, a former soldier working as a civilian for the military was arrested last year after he contacted a Russian consulate in Germany with an offer to reveal classified information.

Marco Buschmann, Germany’s justice minister, said after the latest detentions, “We know that the Russian regime is also focusing on our country.”

The arrests came amid heightened security at many of Germany’s critical infrastructure sites in the wake of the sabotage of gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022. Intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the pipeline, part of which is in Germany.