Drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport: Russian trace and political reactions

The attempted drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport can be more clearly attributed to Russia than previously known - and is leading to calls for more robust measures in political Berlin. WELT AM SONNTAG reported at the weekend about two alleged suspects and details about their entry and exit to Germany. One of the two suspects, who is said to have been responsible for the logistics of the attack, is attributed to the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

The two main suspects are the Belarusian citizen Andrei Ka. and the Russian Oleg Le. The Belarusian is said to have entered the Schengen area via Latvia on July 28, around a week before the crime. Investigators believe he is a so-called disposable agent, a criminal hired for acts of sabotage. GRU agent Le. is said to have organized the logistics and directed Ka.

The Left's interior expert, Clara Bünger, criticizes this circumstance: "Before further tightening is discussed here, one should ask why the existing options were apparently not used to observe the suspect and prevent possible criminal acts." She called for a “clear picture of the situation” and effective protection of critical infrastructure.

The deputy leader of the Green parliamentary group, Agnieszka Brugger, also underlines this aspect and urges a decisive response: “Anyone who attacks and threatens our country in this way must really believe that in the end it will have a high price for themselves.” The Russian attacks in the Polish-Ukrainian border region are “another deliberate, unscrupulous threat.”

According to Polish authorities, Russia attacked a truck near the Ukrainian border with Poland on Sunday and a train was also hit with a drone. According to information from the news magazine Spiegel, in another incident two kilometers from the border, a privately chartered special train had to be partially evacuated after drones attacked in the region.

AfD like “mouthpiece of the Kremlin”

On board this train were one of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's (CDU) closest advisors, the foreign and security policy advisor in the Chancellery Günter Sautter, and the former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had been in Kiev for consultations.

The SPD's domestic policy spokesman, Sebastian Fiedler, says there will be no letup in support for Ukraine. "Putin must understand that it will be expensive for him if he attacks us. In this respect, coordinated European action against the shadow fleet is of great importance." At the same time, one must be careful not to fall for the usual tricks that the Russian regime has mastered perfectly. Russia wants to give the impression that “our protective measures and reactions to Russia’s attacks are a provocation.” The AfD is once again behaving like “a mouthpiece for the Kremlin”.

The AfD rejects this representation and demands more transparency from the federal government. “The federal government works with double standards: it has taken massive measures against Russia despite ongoing investigations and without providing concrete evidence,” says the foreign policy spokesman for the Bundestag faction, Markus Frohnmaier. It remains inactive towards Kiev, although in the much more serious case of the NordStream attack, the Federal Prosecutor General has already brought charges against specific suspects based on his investigations.

Poland expressed alarm after the attacks in the border area with Ukraine. “Putin is escalating,” wrote Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on X. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called a crisis team together for Sunday afternoon. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha called for tougher consequences for Moscow. Russian attacks on the Polish-Ukrainian border are not simply a continuation of the attacks on the Ukrainian state borders, he wrote on Platform