The German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office has arrested two men in Bavaria for acting as agents for Russia. The “Donetsk People’s Republic” is now considered a terrorist organisation.
On Wednesday, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office had the German-Russian nationals Dieter S. and Alexander J. arrested in Bayreuth for “secret service agent activity” in a particularly serious case and membership of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”. The Federal Criminal Police Office in charge of the investigation also searched the suspects’ homes and workplaces with the support of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office. This was based on two arrest warrants issued by the investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice last week.
The investigators consider the two to be “urgently suspected” of having worked for a foreign secret service in a particularly serious case. The 39-year-old Dieter S. is said to have been in contact with a person “linked to a Russian secret service”, according to the arrest warrant. He had been in contact with this person since October 2023 about possible sabotage operations against military infrastructure and industrial sites in Germany.
The aim of the espionage and planned sabotage was “to undermine the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression”, the authorities explain. S. is therefore also being investigated for conspiracy to cause an explosive detonation and arson. According to “Spiegel”, he also had a firearm.
In preparation for the allegedly planned offences, S. had collected and photographed information about potential targets, including facilities of the US armed forces, and then passed it on to his interlocutor.
According to media reports, the documented facilities are said to have been the site in Grafenwöhr, Bavaria, where Ukrainian soldiers are trained on US tanks, among other things. The 37-year-old Alexander J. helped the suspect S. with this from March 2024 at the latest.
With the arrest warrant against S., the investigating judges of the Federal Court of Justice also charged him with membership of a foreign terrorist organisation and thus declared the “Donetsk People’s Republic” in eastern Ukraine to be such a banned organisation. S. is said to have been active there as a fighter in an armed unit between December 2014 and September 2016.
From spring 2014, the pro-Russian region took military control of the now largely destroyed Ukrainian administrative district of Donetsk and thus claimed independence from Ukraine.
The investigating judge had ordered Dieter S. to be remanded in custody immediately, and on Thursday, following a presentation, this also applied to Alexander J. If convicted, both could face prison sentences of up to ten years.
“We know that the Russian power apparatus is also focussing on our country,” said Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (Free Democratic Party, FDP) after the two suspects were arrested; a “defensive and resolute” response was needed. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (Social Democratic Party, SPD) emphasised: “This is a particularly serious case of suspected agent activity for Putin’s criminal regime. We will continue to thwart such threat plans.”
According to a spokesperson, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) has summoned the Russian ambassador in Berlin, Sergei Netshaev, to the Foreign Office.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: US Army “Bradley” tanks on German rail cars bound for Grafenwoehr (US Department of Defense).
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