A series of sabotage attacks on hundreds of vehicles in Berlin, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in December 2024, according to German security authorities, is believed to have been orchestrated by Russian assigners. The suspected perpetrators, three men from Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, allegedly sprayed foam into the exhaust pipes of the vehicles for a fee and left stickers with a photo of the German Federal Minister of Economics and the Green Party’s chancellor candidate, Robert Habeck and the phrase “Be a Green!” on the vehicles. This is reported by the Spiegel on Wednesday.
The three suspected saboteurs, it is claimed, were deliberately recruited through a chat and were to receive 100 euros for each damaged vehicle. Several thousand euros had allegedly already been handed over to the men in cash. One of the three men has reportedly broken down and confessed to the authorities, while the other two have left Germany, according to the magazine.
The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in collaboration with other European intelligence services, had warned of sabotage attacks by so-called “Low Level Agents” in the past few months, the Spiegel reports. These are believed to be amateur operatives who are recruited by Russian intelligence services to carry out sabotage or propaganda actions or assist in espionage, according to the German authorities.
The European Union has long accused Russia of being responsible for sabotage attacks in Europe, without presenting concrete evidence. In recent western media, there have been reports of hybrid attacks by Russia in the Baltic region. However, western intelligence services later found that accidents, rather than sabotage, were the cause of the damage to energy and communication infrastructure on the seafloor of the Baltic Sea.