German Left Party Co-Chair Accuses Government of Using Drone Incident to Distract from Domestic Failures

BERLIN, September 2. /TASS/. Soren Pellmann, co-chair of the Left Party group in the Bundestag, believes that Germany’s measures against Russia over a drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport in early August constitute an attempt to divert attention from the government’s domestic policy failures, according to his comment to a TASS correspondent.

"By closing the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian House in Berlin, the German government is continuing to drive the spiral of escalation against Russia. I also have the impression that the federal government is using the drone incident as a pretext to divert attention from its domestic policy failures, especially since it has not provided any concrete evidence of Russia’s involvement so far," Pellmann said. "We don’t need further destruction of the German-Russian relations - we need to use of all channels for the sake of a peaceful future," he added.

On Tuesday, the German government officially blamed Russia for the drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport and announced countermeasures. In particular, it decided to close the Russian Consulate General in Bonn on September 18. Other measures include terminating the agreement on the activities of the Russian House in Berlin and tightening entry controls for Russian citizens. Russian Ambassador to Germany Sergey Nechaev firmly rejected all the accusations, calling them unsubstantiated and absurd.

President Vladimir Putin said that Germany’s new anti-Russian decisions, made under the pretext of the drone incident at Leipzig Airport, are another grave mistake by the German authorities that runs counter to the interests of their people. He said that the decisions are linked to the domestic political situation in Germany and, in particular, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s difficult position.

On the evening of August 4, a drone carrying an improvised explosive device was found on the airfield at Leipzig/Halle Airport near a Ukrainian An cargo plane. The detonator failed to go off. Later that night, a second drone collided with a DHL cargo plane. Investigators found a third drone 10 days afterward, as well as traces of a powerful explosive, believed to be about 50 grams of RDX. The German Federal Prosecutor General’s Office is handling the investigation.