From attempted break-ins at transformer stations to rail incidents and alleged drone surveillance, German authorities are seeing a sharp increase in suspicious activity. According to police data, 321 cases of suspected sabotage were recorded throughout the country in 2025
Last year it was Germany registered 321 cases of suspected sabotage, according to the confidential report on the state of security Federal Criminal Office (BKA) which is available to the public services NDR and WDR, as well as the newspaper Zidojce Zeitung. Already in the first weeks of the new year, BKA again recorded several alleged sabotages, it reports Deutsche says.
It is reported that on January 7, unknown persons broke into the transformer station in Wuppertal. The front door was broken in, and a tool bag was later found. A day later, the police in Starnberg, Bavaria, recorded an attempted break-in at a wind power plant. In Oberhausen, on January 9, two radio devices of the German Railways, which could have been used to eavesdrop on the radio communication for the shunting of freight traffic, disappeared.
A few days later, a locomotive loaded with chlorine, formaldehyde and nitrobenzene derailed in Essen. Metal clips were placed on the rails. A transport with ammunition and equipment for the American army was actually supposed to travel through that section that evening - but it was diverted.
In October of last year, an information gathering center named "Cjtenvende" was established. Since then, the BKA has been systematically recording possible acts of sabotage and reconnaissance attempts there. The German journalists of the aforementioned newsrooms had access to the report. The confidential document shows that in 2025, the police registered a total of 321 cases of suspected sabotage across the country. The document also contains a list of federal provinces.
North Rhine-Westphalia (88) and Lower Saxony (51) recorded the most cases, followed by Bavaria (30), Saxony (30), Hesse (21), Baden-Württemberg (19), Rhineland-Palatinate (18), Berlin (14), Brandenburg (11), Bremen (8), Saxony-Anhalt (7), Hamburg (6), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (6), Saarland (4), Schleswig-Holstein (4) and Thuringia (3).
The BKA records events in the categories "railway facilities/rails", "Bundeswehr" (German military), "power plant/company, oil/gas/coal", "police", "radio pole/relay station", "transformer station/electric pole/line", "waterworks/water supply", "airport/air traffic", "other bodies/authorities" and "other infrastructure".
BKA also records drone overflights, in some cases allegedly for reconnaissance. According to the document, 1.289 such cases with a total of 2.310 drone overflights were reported to the authorities last year - because in some cases, several aircraft were seen at the same time.
According to the document, the crew of the Federal Police ship Bayreuth on the night of January 11 spotted multiple red-green flashing objects in the night sky above the Baltic Sea. Two of the alleged drones reportedly flew over the island of Fehmarna for some time. At that time, there was an oil tanker in the vicinity, which, coming from Russia, was sailing towards the west.
Security services estimate that Russian intelligence services could be behind some of these events. According to estimates by, among others, the Office for the Protection of the Constitutional Order, their targets are primarily military establishments and critical infrastructure, such as energy supply or traffic systems.
Russian intelligence services have been recruiting so-called "disposable agents" for some time. This does not mean professional spies, but people who are most often contacted via the Internet. They should, with monetary compensation, e.g. to scout military transports and carry out sabotage. In recent years, such persons have been arrested in several European countries, including in Germany. Russia has always denied involvement in such actions in the past.
In order to better prepare for the detection of such actions, the Federal Ministry of the Interior intends to soon establish a defense center against so-called hybrid threats in the Federal Office for the Protection of Constitutional Order (BfV). It would be similar to the Joint Counter-Terrorism Center (GTC) in Berlin, which has been dealing with Islamist terrorism for decades.
In the future, it is desired to record and analyze possible espionage and sabotage more quickly, as well as to react to events more quickly. From October 2025, a group of representatives of security authorities at the federal and provincial levels meets every Wednesday at the BfV in Cologne to exchange information on cases of suspected sabotage.
Especially since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression, the frequency of alleged sabotage in Germany has increased significantly. In the meantime, the investigators are recording certain successes: in Poland, several people were charged because, allegedly on the orders of Russia, they hid incendiary devices in airplane luggage - in Leipzig, because of this, there was almost a disaster. In Munich, three men were sentenced for scouting railroad tracks for possible attacks on military transports for the Russian intelligence service.
This week, the General State Prosecutor's Office in Hamburg ordered the arrest of a Romanian and a Greek. They are suspected of having attempted to damage several warships at the shipyard in the port of Hamburg last year. Among other things, they are accused of blocking important systems. Allegedly, several kilograms of abrasive sand were thrown into the engine block of the Emden corvette. The presumption of innocence applies until the court verdict.
In some of the most spectacular cases, in which the investigators still estimate that it was sabotage, the perpetrators have not been identified. For example, someone on one Navy warship cut bundles of cables, and in another case, apparently, waste oil was deliberately injected into the ship's drinking water system. In both cases, the state prosecutor's offices suspended the proceedings.
In other cases, meanwhile, it turned out that not all alarm was justified. For example, drone sightings over the industrial park in Brunsbitel in Schleswig-Holstein have drawn public attention, but the investigation has not been able to clarify what exactly happened. To this day, it remains unclear whether unusually large, perhaps even military reconnaissance drones were actually circling over the area. Sometimes such reports turn out to be misperceptions.
It is possible that it was the same in Cologne. For the first time in the summer of 2024, the media reported on holes in the fence of the Bundeswehr barracks. It was said that the water supply there could be threatened. But according to the state prosecutor's office, for now "there are no lines of investigation that promise success." A less spectacular background cannot be ruled out either: let's say that the holes in the fence were created during normal maintenance work on the green areas.
Source: DW
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