{"id":13599,"date":"2026-09-09T14:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T14:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/13599\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T14:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T14:17:08","slug":"berlin-blamed-russia-for-bomb-at-nato-airlift-hub-then-it-closed-a-consulate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/13599\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin blamed Russia for bomb at NATO airlift hub. Then it closed a consulate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the night of Aug. 4, an employee at Leipzig\/Halle Airport in eastern <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/germany\">Germany<\/a> found a <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/drones\">drone<\/a> carrying an explosive device inside the secured cargo area, beside the southern runway. It was sitting next to an Antonov Airlines cargo aircraft \u2014 the Ukrainian carrier that flies military supplies. Federal police brought in a bomb-disposal robot and removed the detonator. Flight operations stopped completely, and investigators believe a second drone then struck a DHL cargo plane that was going around because the runway had been closed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ten days later, according to the public broadcasters NDR and WDR and the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung, a third drone was found west of the airport, carrying roughly 50 grams of a substance <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/investigations\">investigators<\/a> suspected to be hexogen \u2014 a military explosive. The prosecutor general\u2019s office declined to comment on that report. Saxony\u2019s counterterrorism police and the state prosecutor\u2019s extremism unit have the case, and classify the airport as critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>      Stay informed.Stay ahead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"we-copy\">\n        Join Washington Examiner for unlimited access to the news, analysis, and commentary that matter most.\n      <\/p>\n<p>    Trusted reporting.Unlimited access.<\/p>\n<p class=\"we-deck\">\n      Subscribe for full access to Washington Examiner coverage, expert political analysis,<br \/>\n      and subscriber-only journalism.\n    <\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"we-cta\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/subscribe\/digital\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n      Get Unlimited Access<br \/>\n      \u203a<br \/>\n    <\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"we-member\">Already a member? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/sign-in\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"we-cancel\">Cancel anytime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the night of Aug. 4, an employee at Leipzig\/Halle Airport in eastern Germany found a drone carrying&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[191,62,13,6710,32,7,20,71,437,130],"class_list":["post-13599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-china","tag-diplomacy","tag-drones","tag-georgia","tag-germany","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}