A Moldovan man has been arrested on suspicion of espionage after a drone flew over a defence contractor\u2019s facility in Munich and allegedly captured images of the site, prosecutors in Germany announced Friday.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old man allegedly flew the drone over the facility on Wednesday and is suspected of having \u201ctaken photographs and video recordings that are sensitive from a national security perspective\u201d, the Munich public prosecutor\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors suspect the man of planning to pass the images along to \u201ca foreign entity or a banned organisation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Police arrested the man near the sensitive weapons industry site after receiving a tip about suspicious activity from the public, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
He has been in custody since the arrest.<\/p>\n
Authorities in Germany, one of Ukraine\u2019s biggest military supporters, have uncovered numerous suspected espionage, sabotage and disinformation plots tied to Russia since Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n
A number of Germany\u2019s European NATO allies have also levelled similar accusations against Russia, sometimes describing the covert activity as part of a \u201chybrid war\u201d against the West.<\/p>\n
Germany and other European countries have also repeatedly observed instances of drones flying over sensitive sites such as airports, military bases, and power plants.<\/p>\n
Moscow has routinely denied being behind any such plots.<\/p>\n
Several defence industry players have facilities in Munich, including the Franco-German tank manufacturer KNDS, the European aerospace company Airbus Defence and Space, and the defence electronics specialist Hensoldt.<\/p>\n
The Bavarian city is also home to a cluster of defence start-ups, such as drone maker Helsing.<\/p>\n
In other cases German police have arrested a number of alleged so-called \u201cdisposable\u201d agents, recruited to carry out sabotage and espionage without any formal training for Russia, often in exchange for small payments.<\/p>\n
Berlin recently gave police and the military new powers to potentially shoot down unauthorised drones within German territory.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers this year also passed new rules aimed at strengthening the \u201cresilience\u201d of critical infrastructure by identifying sensitive facilities and requiring operators to enhance security measures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Moldovan man has been arrested on suspicion of espionage after a drone flew over a defence contractor\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,355,26489],"class_list":["post-56630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-germany","tag-international","tag-mna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}