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Three Ukrainian nationals have been arrested on suspicion of plotting parcel bomb attacks in Germany on behalf of the Russian state, prosecutors said.
The German federal prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that the men, identified only as Vladyslav T, Daniil B and Yevhen B, in line with German privacy rules, had been detained in recent days in Germany and Switzerland.
They are accused of “secret agent activity for sabotage purposes” and of agreeing by, at the latest, March 2025 “with one or several persons presumed to be working for Russian state institutions” to carry out “aggravated arson” and “cause a detonation using explosives”.
The prosecutors alleged the men’s intent had been to carry out “explosives attacks on cargo transport in the Federal Republic of Germany”, by shipping parcels from Germany to recipients in Ukraine carrying “explosives or incendiary devices” that would “detonate during transport”.
Vladyslav T allegedly sent two test packages containing GPS trackers in late March from Cologne, in western Germany, “to scout out suitable transport routes” on the orders of Yevhen B, who is believed to have provided the package contents via Daniil B.
Last July, European security agencies were shaken by three separate package explosions, sent from Lithuania, that detonated in Birmingham, in the UK; Leipzig, Germany; and near Warsaw, in Poland.
German authorities said in October that a plane could have been downed if the devices had ignited in flight. The logistics firm DHL took measures to protect its network after fires at one of its warehouses in Leipzig.
Western security agencies were quick to suspect Russian intelligence, with the incidents coming amid a series of other hostile acts including arson, cyber-attacks, data theft and the targeting of undersea cables.
All the couriers appear to have operated within the same network and transported similar content of sex toys and massage pillows.
Reuters reported that the devices were rigged to ignite using pre-set timers repurposed from inexpensive Chinese electronics typically used for tracking lost items. Their impact was intensified by tubes disguised as cosmetics, which were filled with a flammable gel containing compounds such as nitromethane.
Yevhen B, who was arrested on Tuesday in Thurgau, in north-eastern Switzerland, has been transferred to German custody. German authorities arrested Vladyslav T on Friday in Cologne and Daniil B on Saturday in the south-western city of Konstanz.
The federal criminal police have been carrying out the investigation owing to its “special significance”, as is common in suspected terrorism cases.
