BERLIN\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The German government on Tuesday blamed Russia for an attempted attack at Leipzig\/Halle Airport last month using a drone laden with explosives, and announced that it would shut down a Russian consulate among other measures against Moscow.<\/p>\n
The drone was found near a Ukrainian plane on the evening of Aug. 4 and the device was defused. German officials said at the time that the incident posed a new level of danger.<\/p>\n
Moscow has been widely accused by Western officials of running a campaign of sabotage and disruption across Europe with the aim of undermining support for Ukraine and destabilizing European nations.<\/p>\n
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Tuesday that authorities found elements such as the drone configuration, components, explosives and detonator that are \u201cknown to us from other Russian hybrid operations and its war against Ukraine.\u201d He said that the device pointed to \u201ca high degree of technical expertise\u201d and painstaking planning, but that the execution of the plan appears to have been left to \u201clow-level\u201d agents.<\/p>\n
Dobrindt told reporters in Berlin that intelligence points to \u201cpeople being involved who acted on behalf of Russian state entities,\u201d though he didn\u2019t specify which ones. \u201cTaken together, the police investigations, the pattern and intelligence findings prove a Russian responsibility for the attempted attack at Leipzig airport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that \u201cwith the attempted attack in Leipzig, the Russian leadership decided deliberately to do significant damage again to our already massively burdened bilateral relationship.\u201d He said that the Russian consulate in Bonn will be closed effective Sept. 18 and the contract under which the Russian House cultural center in Berlin is operated will be rescinded.<\/p>\n
Germany will propose the addition of more people from Russia to European Union sanctions lists \u201cin the context of hybrid attacks,\u201d will step up entry controls for people from Russia and \u201cincrease pressure on the shadow fleet,\u201d a reference to tankers suspected of shipping Russian oil in violation of international sanctions. The EU has sanctioned hundreds of \u201cshadow fleet\u201d ships.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry told the Interfax news agency that Moscow \u201cwould respond\u201d to what it described as Germany\u2019s \u201canti-Russian decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leipzig\/Halle is a major hub for international freight and for providing support to Ukraine. The planes that regularly use it include Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft.<\/p>\n
It is also home to NATO\u2019s Strategic Airlift International Solution, or SALIS, which is currently operational almost every day in delivering equipment to NATO battle groups along its eastern flank from Finland to Romania and supporting EU and alliance nation missions.<\/p>\n
In 2024, an incendiary device ignited at a logistics center at the airport and set fire to a freight container before it could be loaded onto a cargo plane, part of a plot that Western security officials suspect was organized by Russian intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The German government on Tuesday blamed Russia for an attempted attack at Leipzig\/Halle Airport last month using a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,45511,14931,327,190,3504,7945,73819,4335,1207,238,9316,1865,40550,241],"class_list":["post-157277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-device","tag-drone-attack","tag-eu","tag-germany","tag-intelligence","tag-last-month","tag-leipzig-airport","tag-moscow","tag-people","tag-russia","tag-shadow-fleet","tag-support","tag-tuesday","tag-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117197537779446958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}