Germany has formally blamed Russia for a drone attack on a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport and unveiled a sweeping set of retaliatory measures – four days before Saxony-Anhalt votes in a state election on September 6, a contest the Kremlin-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD) is projected to win outright.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters on Tuesday (September 1) that a drone rigged with explosives and a detonation mechanism was found in a secure area of Leipzig/Halle Airport overnight on August 4, close to Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft used to move NATO and Kyiv-bound military supplies. A bomb disposal robot defused it. Investigators separately confirmed that a second object struck a DHL cargo aircraft as it climbed away from the airport, forcing it to divert to Hanover, while German media have reported that a third explosive-laden drone turned up in a field near the airport about a week later – feeding suspicion that several devices were meant to work in concert.
What investigators say
Dobrindt said the drone’s configuration, components and detonation system matched patterns “known to us from other Russian hybrid operations and its war against Ukraine”, and that intelligence pointed to low-level operatives acting on behalf of Russian state entities, even as the underlying planning reflected “a high degree of technical expertise”. He summarised the case thus: “Taken together, the police investigations, the pattern and intelligence findings prove a Russian responsibility for the attempted attack at Leipzig airport.”
Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul went further, describing the operation as a deliberate move by Russia’s leadership “to do significant damage again to our already massively burdened bilateral relationship”. A US defence official told CNN the drone belonged to a Russian intelligence service and carried military-grade explosives; investigators believe it was meant to disable parked aircraft and delay Ukraine-bound shipments while sending Berlin a warning. Dobrindt also raised the national threat assessment from “general” to “high”, noting that “we are not at war, but we are a daily target of hybrid attacks.”
Berlin’s response
The retaliatory package is unusually broad, as Wadephul ordered the Russian consulate general in Bonn closed from September 18 and rescinded the operating agreement for Berlin’s “Russian House” cultural centre, which officials suspect has doubled as an intelligence hub. Germany is tightening entry controls on Russian nationals, pushing the EU to trim the 90-day tourist visas issued to Russians, seeking fresh sanctions listings, and pressing for tighter restrictions on Russia’s alleged shadow fleet of tankers. The Russian ambassador was also summoned to the Foreign Ministry.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte wrote that the alliance “will continue to strengthen our ability to deter and defend all Allies against any threat – including malign actions like those seen in Leipzig and elsewhere”, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot voiced similar support, with EU foreign ministers taking up further sanctions at a meeting in Ireland this week.
Moscow rejects the claim
Russia rejected the accusation outright. President Vladimir Putin, speaking in Kyrgyzstan, suggested Germany’s leadership was using the episode to deflect from domestic troubles, calling the evidence fabricated and Berlin’s response “a serious mistake”. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova argued that “the Russian House has long haunted them... that's why they were looking for something to latch onto”. warning that Moscow “will respond to all anti-Russian decisions”.
The election question
Saxony-Anhalt votes on September 6 for its ninth state parliament, and recent polling puts the AfD, led locally by Ulrich Siegmund, on roughly 40-43 per cent – close to an outright majority on some surveys – against around 22-25 per cent for Premier Sven Schulze’s Christian Democrats (CDU). A win would hand the AfD its first-ever state government and, commentators note, sharpen co-leader Alice Weidel’s pressure on the CDU’s national “firewall” against cooperating with the far right.
AfD leader Tino Chrupalla did not dispute Russian involvement outright but accused the government of double standards, telling Welt TV: “Above all, I would have welcomed it if the same had been done in response to Ukraine’s attack on Nord Stream.” Other AfD figures have been blunter still in past clashes over the party's Russia ties: deputy parliamentary leader Markus Frohnmaier has previously dismissed similar accusations as an “embarrassing election manoeuvre”, while a CDU lawmaker has accused the party of harbouring “a sleeper cell loyal to Russia” in its ranks – a charge mainstream parties have repeated at intervals rather than one issued specifically over Leipzig.
The AfD’s sympathy for Moscow runs deeper than one election-week. Both Chrupalla and Weidel have visited Russia in the past, the party has repeatedly called for resuming Russian gas imports, and Weidel has argued that no “sensible peace negotiations” can happen unless “Russia’s security interests are finally taken into account”. Chrupalla has previously said he saw “no specific danger” to Germany from Russia, remarks his own party’s defence spokesman called “abstruse”. A 2024 survey found roughly 80 per cent of Germans overall consider AfD politicians’ closeness to Russia unacceptable, against roughly half of AfD supporters themselves.
Russia’s supporters, sceptics, and Russian-origin Germans
Germany’s roughly 2.5-3 million Russlanddeutsche – ethnic-German repatriates from the former Soviet Union, most of whom arrived from the 1990s onward – have become a recurring flashpoint in this debate. The AfD draws disproportionate support from this community in some districts, and media coverage has often been quick to attribute AfD gains to it. Researchers and members of the community itself push back on that claim, arguing that many Russlanddeutsche back the AfD for the same anti-immigration reasons as other voters rather than out of loyalty to Moscow, and that treating the whole group as a Kremlin proxy risks unfairly stigmatising people whose own family history in the twentieth century often involved Soviet-era deportation and repression. That tension – a small but real pro-Russia current within German politics, a much larger body of public opinion still firmly behind Ukraine, and a minority community caught between the two – is likely to sharpen further as the Leipzig accusation collides with campaign season.
Saxony-Anhalt sits alongside Saxony and Thuringia as part of an easterGerman bloc where the AfD has become the dominant force, and where every mainstream party has so far upheld a “firewall” ruling out coalitions with it. If the AfD does secure close to a majority on September 6, the practical question becomes whether the CDU, the Left, or breakaway MPs might nonetheless enable an AfD-led government – a scenario that would make Saxony-Anhalt the first German state parliament under far-right control since the 1930s. A Russia-blame narrative coming days before that vote is, for the CDU, both a genuine national-security message and an uncomfortable data point for AfD-sympathetic voters to weigh at the ballot box.
