New suspicion of sabotage against electricity infrastructure in Germany

At the beginning of the night, a pawn found a suspicious object on the ground near a substation in Dormagen (west), a spokesman for the Neuss police told AFP.

The object did not cause damage and was “collected,” said the police, adding that its potential to cause damage still has to be determined.

The discovery takes place two days after two alleged attacks on other electrical substations, the most recent acts of sabotage against the country's critical infrastructure.

Police opened an anti-terrorist investigation into the first incident, in which handcrafted explosives were detonated early on Tuesday at a substation in Jänschwalde (east, near the border with Poland), which distributes electricity from a coal-fired power station.

In the second incident, in Bergheim (west), saboteurs deliberately caused a short circuit in an Amprion substation, hitting air power cables. The substations of Dormagen and Bergheim, located near Cologne, are only about 15 kilometres from each other.

According to Herbert Reul, Minister of the Interior of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the authorities are investigating a possible link between the incidents in Bergheim and Jänschwalde.

The head of the Cologne (west) crime police noted the presence of “comparable evidence that needs to be examined carefully”.

“ In both places, it seems that pyrotechnic devices were used”, he added.

None of the attacks, which were not claimed, resulted in widespread blackouts, although the operation of nearby power plants was affected.

In recent months, Germany has faced repeated attacks on its energy infrastructure, some of which have been claimed by far-left activists, particularly in the Berlin region.

Germany, one of Ukraine's main supporters against the Russian invasion, is also the subject of sabotage plans that it attributes to Moscow, an allegation that the Kremlin denies.

The German police announced that early this morning incendiary devices were launched against buildings that house arms companies in Munich and that two Bulgarian suspects were arrested.

According to a regional police spokesman, authorities were alerted about midnight that “incendiary devices had been launched from a car in Mühldorfstrasse” in the eastern part of the Bavarian capital.

“An arsonist device could be immediately extinguished by the police” and “another had to be deactivated,” the German police told the France-Presse news agency (AFP).

Several arms companies are located on the street where the attack took place, including the Rohde & Schwarz group, specializing in security technologies for the German government and army, or the Munich Helsing company, which develops software applied to the defense industry.

Questioned at a press conference alongside his French and Polish counterparts in Weimar (central-west), German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul assured, for his part, that security services were working full steam in a context of multiplying hybrid attacks in the country.

“ We can at any time clarify this type of case,” he added, giving as an example the incident of the explosive drone at Leipzig Airport.

Tensions between Moscow and Berlin intensified this week after Germany officially accused Russia on Tuesday of being directly involved in the drone case in Leipzig.

The German authorities accuse Russia of hiring “low-level” agents for this type of sabotage, i.e. sacrificial, underpaid and often recruited on social networks for one-off missions.