BERLIN — German law enforcement and security agencies are launching a full investigation into two separate disruptive incidents at critical power distribution sites across eastern and western Germany, with officials confirming that deliberate sabotage is the leading working hypothesis.
The first incident came to light early Tuesday morning, when explosive devices were discovered at a high-voltage substation adjacent to the Jänschwalde coal-fired power plant in Brandenburg, a state in Germany’s northeast. Authorities confirmed that while no widespread blackout was triggered across the regional grid, a small number of the hidden devices did ignite, causing damaging short circuits that disrupted substation operations.
Half a day later, a second incident unfolded hundreds of kilometers to the west, at the Bergheim power substation near Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. A sudden short circuit knocked multiple high-voltage power lines out of service Tuesday evening, and local investigators have ruled out accidental technical failure as the cause. Police in Essen, which is overseeing the Bergheim case, told Germany’s national press agency DPA that early evidence points to a deliberate, criminal act, echoing the sabotage suspicions in the Brandenburg case. No widespread power outage occurred after this incident either, but utility operator RWE — which runs several coal-fired power stations that rely on the Bergheim substation to distribute electricity — confirmed that five generating units with a total combined capacity of 4,200 megawatts had to be taken offline as a safety precaution. The company expects all units to resume full operations by the end of this weekend.
These two targeted attacks come as Germany already maintains an elevated national security alert, following a recent accusation from the German federal government that Russian intelligence was behind an attempted drone attack loaded with explosives at Leipzig/Halle Airport on August 4. This is also not the first time critical German power infrastructure has been targeted by sabotage: in January of this year, suspected left-wing extremist extremists set fire to high-voltage transmission lines near a power plant in southwestern Berlin, causing major grid disruptions.
Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Jan Redmann has warned that foreign involvement cannot be ruled out as a possible motive behind Tuesday’s coordinated attacks. Speaking to local German media, Redmann told DPA, “This is a hybrid threat that we are facing right now, so we cannot rule out the possibility that foreign state actors are behind these actions. All possibilities are on the table for who the perpetrators may be.”
As of Wednesday morning, no group or state has claimed responsibility for either attack, and investigations are still ongoing to identify those responsible and assess any broader threats to Germany’s critical national infrastructure.