Nick Marlow German investigators have a new lead in the failed drone attack on Leipzig airport: one of the suspected perpetrators lived in Russia for years, according to Welt. Latvia's security services are supporting the German probe, the paper reports.
The case had already prompted Germany to close Russia's consulate in Bonn and add new sanctions over the plot, as we reported.
A suspect's long residence in Russia, combined with a Baltic intelligence service now feeding information into the case, points toward the kind of state-linked profile German and NATO officials have suspected since the plot was uncovered. It slots into a wider pattern: drone incursions, sabotage and arson attempts across the EU that Western governments have increasingly traced back to Russian intelligence networks as the war in Ukraine drags on.
HYPOTHESIS: the Leipzig plot was directed or facilitated by Russian state actors, not a purely private initiative. Supporting this: the suspect's years in Russia, the scale of Germany's response (consulate closure plus sanctions), and Latvia's willingness to commit its own security services to a foreign case — unusual unless Riga sees a shared threat. Against this: Welt's report does not establish that the suspect acted on orders from Moscow, and no confirmed link to a specific Russian agency has been made public.
Watch for whether German prosecutors formally allege state direction, whether more EU states report parallel leads, and how Moscow responds to Latvia's involvement in an investigation on German soil.
