<\/p>\n
Police vehicles are parked at Leipzig\/Halle Airport, where investigations are underway following the drone incident that occurred early Wednesday morning, in Schkeuditz, Germany, Thursday Aug. 6, 2026. (Hendrik Schmidt\/dpa via AP)<\/p>\n
Hendrik Schmidt\/Hendrik Schmidt\/DPA via AP<\/p>\n
Ukrainian Antonov aircrafts are parked behind a fence on the grounds of Leipzig\/Halle Airport, where investigations are underway following the drone incident that occurred early Wednesday morning, in Schkeuditz, Germany, Thursday Aug. 6, 2026. (Hendrik Schmidt\/dpa via AP)<\/p>\n
Hendrik Schmidt\/Hendrik Schmidt\/DPA via AP<\/p>\n
Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft is parked behind a fence on the grounds of Leipzig\/Halle Airport, in Schkeuditz, Germany, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026. (Hendrik Schmidt\/dpa via AP)<\/p>\n
Hendrik Schmidt\/Hendrik Schmidt\/DPA via AP<\/p>\n
BERLIN (AP) \u2014 For the second time in just over two years, Germany’s Leipzig\/Halle Airport might have narrowly avoided disaster, exposing the vulnerability of Europe\u2019s critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n
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A drone carrying explosives was found late Tuesday at the airport and later defused. The country\u2019s top security official said the incident was a \u201cnew threat quality\u201d and indicated it was \u201cprofessionally\u201d prepared.<\/p>\n
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Separately, \u201can object\u201d collided with a plane Tuesday night, police said. The plane was intact but suffered minor damage.<\/p>\n
In 2024, an incendiary device ignited at a logistics center at the airport and set fire to a freight container, part of a plot that Western security officials suspect was organized by Russian intelligence.<\/p>\n
Leipzig\/Halle is a major international freight hub. The planes that regularly use it include Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft.<\/p>\n
Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann noted on X that \u201cLeipzig Airport is one of Europe\u2019s most important hubs for providing support to Ukraine. It is home to NATO\u2019s SALIS program for strategic airlift. Ukrainian Antonov Airlines has its operational base here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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SALIS is NATO’s Strategic Airlift International Solution. Nine members of the military alliance lease a small group of heavy-lift cargo planes from Antonov.<\/p>\n
SALIS has been used across the world from Darfur to Afghanistan and 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
Here\u2019s what else to know:<\/p>\n
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Western officials have accused Moscow of running sabotage campaigns against Europe<\/p>\n
Although German officials have not pointed to Russia in this case, 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
Officials have accused Russia of organizing plots to set fire to warehouses, launching drones and trying to kill enemies abroad as well as stealing defense technology and carrying out cyberattacks on critical European infrastructure.<\/p>\n
In May, President Vladimir Putin responded to the findings of an Associated Press investigation which has tracked around 200 incidents of disruption across Europe blamed on Russia by Western officials since the invasion of Ukraine. He said Moscow is not waging a sabotage campaign against Europe and demanded that AP \u201cname one proven fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Russia has been accused of drone plots in the past<\/p>\n
Russia has previously been accused of involvement in plots to use explosives hung from drones. A Ukrainian citizen accused of involvement in the 2024 plot to put explosives on DHL cargo planes traveled to a Lithuanian cemetery in mid-2024 where he dug up a cache of items buried by Russian military intelligence, including drone parts and cans of corn filled with explosives.<\/p>\n
The explosives could have hung from the drones as improvised bombs and were destined for the German city of Dusseldorf during the Euro 2024 football championship, Jacek Dobrzy\u0144ski, spokesperson for Poland\u2019s security minister, told AP last year.<\/p>\n
The investigation into the explosives plot involved many countries across Europe.<\/p>\n
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German police press on with investigations <\/p>\n
The drone with \u201can unknown explosive device\u201d was found by an airport employee near the south runway, police said, adding it was being examined after having its detonator removed. An investigation was underway.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, investigators started a search on Thursday surrounding the airport for debris from the object that hit a freight plane.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are setting out to look for the object that collided with the plane,\u201d spokesperson Kay Anders from the Saxony State Criminal Police Office told The Associated Press, adding that police officers would be deployed for a thorough search of the premises.<\/p>\n
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The collision happened after the plane aborted a landing at Leipzig\/Halle because the runway was closed. The plane flew to another German airport, Hannover, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the northwest, where officials found slight damage.<\/p>\n
The plane is still in Hannover, but Anders would not say what kind of damage the plane had suffered, citing the ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n
Top security official says the incidents don’t suggest \u201camateur work\u201d<\/p>\n
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt interrupted his vacation and rushed to the airport Wednesday night for a briefing by investigators.<\/p>\n
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He later told reporters that while drone sightings and drone threats are something Germany has dealt with in the past, \u201cthat a drone armed with explosives is at an airport is a new threat scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dobrindt described what happened as \u201ca hybrid attack scenario,\u201d but didn\u2019t offer more details of authorities\u2019 assessment or specify who might be responsible.<\/p>\n
But he said it was reasonable to believe that such situations \u201cmust be very professionally prepared and implemented,\u201d with technical know-how and experience of dealing with explosives.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this doesn\u2019t point to amateur work,\u201d Dobrindt added.<\/p>\n
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Germany\u2019s drone defense challenged<\/p>\n
Dobrindt said Germany has a mobile drone defense unit and that there is drone defense technology at airports, but the explosive-laden drone was \u201cconceived in such a way, according to what we know at present, precisely to be able to get around drone defense.\u201d He didn\u2019t elaborate.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few months ago, I also made it clear to the public that we need to raise the threat level \u2014 moving away from an abstract threat to a high-level threat,\u201d he said Wednesday. \u201cAnd this is evident right now: the assessment we made months ago \u2014 that we are facing a high-level threat \u2014 is a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neumann, the terrorism expert, added on X that \u201csuspicious drones have only been appearing in significant numbers in Germany since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The targets are almost always the Bundeswehr, the defense industry, and logistics hubs\u2014in other words, precisely the infrastructure that is central to support for Ukraine.\u201d The Bundeswehr is Germany\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n
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Associated Press journalists Emma Burrows in London and Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police vehicles are parked at Leipzig\/Halle Airport, where investigations are underway following the drone incident that occurred early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[406,151,5,50759,9427,640,641,638,639,1801],"class_list":["post-67862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-alexander-dobrindt","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-germany-airport-explosive-drone-leipzig-russia-ukraine","tag-leipzig","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67862","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=67862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}