Germany Arrests 2 in Spying and Sabotage Case Linked to Russia

Two men have been arrested in Germany over suspicions that they spied for Russia and were part of a plot to sabotage aid to Ukraine by trying to blow up military infrastructure on German soil, the authorities announced on Thursday.

The two men, both dual citizens of Russia and Germany, were arrested on Wednesday in Bayreuth, a city about 120 miles north of Munich, German federal prosecutors said. The arrests came as worries grow in Germany about the reach of Russian intelligence and disruption operations.

One of the men had been in contact with Russian intelligence services and had considered a U.S. military base in Germany as one of several potential targets, according to federal prosecutors based in Karlsruhe, in southwestern Germany, who oversaw the arrests.

The two men have not been formally charged. But the federal prosecutors said that the pair were suspected of working for a foreign intelligence service and, in one man’s case, of illegally taking pictures of military infrastructure and of planning explosive attacks and arson.

In a statement on Thursday, Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, condemned a “particularly serious case of suspected agent activity” tied to the “criminal regime” of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Relations between Moscow and Berlin have soured since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last year, Germany closed down four Russian consulates after Moscow limited the number of German diplomatic staff allowed to stay in Russia.