Germany plans to blame Russia for Leipzig attack as tensions with Putin escalate – POLITICO

In response to questions from POLITICO about Germany’s plan to hold Russia directly responsible, a government spokesperson said: “The Chancellery does not engage in speculation. The only thing that matters is the official attribution made by the federal government at its own discretion and after weighing all the results of the investigation.”

Zeitenwende 2.0

Several pieces of evidence point to Russia following the foiled attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport. According to an investigation by German media outlets, the drone, which had been rigged with explosives, was intended to strike a Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane, which is also used to transport military equipment.

The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence assessments directly linked Russia to the drone. There are also parallels to a series of sabotage attacks against European air cargo in 2024, which Russian intelligence services are suspected of carrying out. Moscow has denied any involvement.

So far, it remains unclear what new information has led Berlin to pin the blame directly on Russia. The threshold of evidence required for an official attribution is high and, in the past, such an attribution has been avoided, with German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt saying earlier this month that, “the key is to have the necessary evidence or a very strong suspicion.”

The move has been described by two officials as a “Zeitenwende 2.0,” a reference to the historic shift on defense that former Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The discovery of a weapons cache near Berlin also played a role in the German shift. In a wooded area near lake Müggelsee, agents from the German domestic intelligence service discovered an underground cache containing two semi-automatic weapons. The case came to light through a report by the investigative consortium of German media outlets NDR, WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, even though the discovery had was made in October of last year.