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The men are suspected of acting as secret agents for the purpose
of sabotage, as well as agreeing to commit arson and bring about
an explosion, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
The alleged plans fit a pattern in which Western officials have
accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and
other incidents across Europe since the full-scale invasion of
Ukraine more than three years ago.
Two of the men — identified only as Vladyslav T. and Daniil B.
in line with German privacy rules — were arrested in different
parts of Germany on Friday and Saturday respectively. The third,
identified as Yevhen B., was arrested in Tuesday in the northern
Thurgau region of neighboring Switzerland.
The suspects are accused of telling “one or more people
suspected to be acting on behalf of Russian state agencies”
around March that they were prepared to carry out attacks on
freight transport in Germany, prosecutors said. The alleged plan
was for the men to send packages that would explode or catch
fire while being transported to Ukraine.
One of the suspects, Vladyslav T., mailed two “test packages” in
Cologne at the end of March that contained GPS trackers to scope
out possible means of transport, according to prosecutors. He
was allegedly tasked with doing so by Yevhen B., who is accused
of providing the contents of the packages via Daniil B.
German prosecutors did not elaborate further on what was in the
packages or on how and where they were dispatched.
In a previous case last year, Western security officials suspect
Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices
in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including
one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another
that ignited in a warehouse in England.
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