A leading German defence executive has declared that Germany and Russia are already effectively at war, as Berlin formally accused Moscow of responsibility for an alleged sabotage operation involving explosives at a major airport.
Stefan Thumann, whose company Donaustahl supplies combat drones to Ukraine, said a sustained campaign of suspected Russian sabotage inside Germany had moved beyond what European governments have traditionally described as “hybrid warfare”.
“Germany and Russia are at war,” Mr Thumann told Politico.
His remarks came as the German government escalated its response to an alleged Russian operation at Leipzig/Halle Airport, a major international freight hub with an important role in supporting Ukraine and Nato operations.
Berlin said Moscow was responsible for an attempted attack on August 4, when a drone carrying explosives was discovered near a Ukrainian aircraft at the airport before being defused.
Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s interior minister, said the incident fitted an established pattern of Russian activity across Europe.
Referring to what he described as “Russian hybrid operations”, Mr Dobrindt said the government “comes to the conclusion that Russia is responsible for the hybrid attack in Leipzig on Aug. 4”.
The attribution represents a significant hardening of Berlin’s public position towards Moscow. Germany has previously accused Russia of conducting espionage, cyber attacks and sabotage operations on its territory, but the latest case has prompted direct diplomatic consequences.
Foreign minister Johann Wadephul subsequently announced that the Russian consulate in Bonn would close on September 18, while the operating contract for the Russian House cultural centre in Berlin would also be terminated.
Leipzig/Halle occupies a strategically important position in Europe’s logistics network. Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft regularly use the airport, while the site also supports Nato’s Strategic Airlift International Solution programme.
The SALIS operation runs almost daily, transporting equipment to alliance battle groups along Nato’s eastern flank, from Finland to Romania, as well as supporting other European Union and Nato missions.
The August incident was not the first suspected case of Russian activity connected to the airport.
In 2024, an incendiary device ignited at a logistics centre, setting fire to a freight container before it could be loaded onto a cargo aircraft. Western security officials subsequently linked the operation to Russian intelligence.
For Mr Thumann, the threat has become intensely personal.
The Donaustahl executive said he had been placed under continuous protection after German authorities uncovered an alleged Russian intelligence plot to poison him in 2025. Officials warned him shortly before Christmas that his life was believed to be at risk, with a suspected low-level operative detained within days.
Mr Thumann said sabotage and assassination plots should not be regarded as a separate category of conflict.
He described such activity as an “act of war … controlled and coordinated here by the Russian armed forces”.
The executive has since taken extraordinary precautions. He said he had converted official addresses into “honeypots” intended to identify hostile actors and now lives at undisclosed locations under the protection of bodyguards.
He has not seen members of his family for months and has prepared both a will and an advance healthcare directive.
Moscow has been accused by Western governments and intelligence agencies of conducting an increasingly broad campaign of sabotage and disruption across Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
European officials have argued that the objective is to undermine military and political support for Kyiv while creating instability and uncertainty inside countries backing Ukraine.
The alleged targeting of infrastructure associated with Ukrainian and Nato logistics would represent a potentially significant escalation. Leipzig/Halle is not simply a civilian airport but an important logistical connection between Western military supply networks and the alliance’s eastern flank.
Mr Thumann’s language nevertheless goes considerably further than that generally used by European governments.
Western leaders have largely avoided describing Russia’s campaign of espionage, cyber attacks and sabotage as a direct state of war, preferring the term “hybrid warfare” to characterise hostile activity that falls below the threshold of conventional armed conflict.
Mr Thumann rejects that distinction, “Germany and Russia are at war,” he said.
Berlin’s decision to formally attribute the Leipzig incident to Moscow suggests that the gap between those two positions may be narrowing.
As suspected attacks on infrastructure, logistics facilities and defence industry figures become increasingly frequent, Germany faces an uncomfortable question: how long can a campaign of sustained sabotage be described as something other than conflict simply because conventional Russian forces have not crossed its borders?
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