EU and NATO step up pressure on Russia after Germany ‘escalation incidents’
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "EU and NATO step up pressure on Russia after Germany ‘escalation incidents’")
Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday. Photograph: (X)
Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said the whole alliance stood “in full solidarity with Germany”. Germany’s interior minister said on Tuesday that the drone’s configuration, components, explosives and detonator were all known from other Russian hybrid operations.
A day after the German government said police investigations and intelligence findings had proved that Russia was behind the ‘hybrid war’ incidents, the chiefs of Nato and the European Commission warned that Moscow is growing increasingly reckless and vowed to respond to a “new normal”.
“Leipzig marks a new escalation on European Union soil directly attributed to Russia,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a day after Berlin blamed Russia for a failed drone attack last month on Leipzig airport.
“We have to step up and that means being ready to respond to Russia’s recklessness faster and better,” von der Leyen said.
Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said the whole alliance stood “in full solidarity with Germany”.
Russia has rejected German accusations that a drone carrying explosives deliberately targeted a Ukrainian cargo plane on 4 August.
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The drone was defused by a robot at Leipzig/Halle airport but a second one is thought to have collided with another cargo plane.
A third drone was found 10 days later at the Leipzig airport, an important Nato hub that is regularly used by Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft.
Germany’s interior minister said on Tuesday that the drone’s configuration, components, explosives and detonator were all known from other Russian hybrid operations.
Two suspects were reportedly identified in the Leipzig incidents: a Belarusian with a Russian passport who entered on a tourist visa and another with Latvian and Russian passports.
Berlin has said it will close the Russian consulate in Bonn and the Russian House cultural institution.
The Russian foreign ministry said Berlin had offered no evidence to back its claims and promised to respond in “mirror-image” fashion.
Germany’s chargé d’affaires Bernd Finke was summoned to hear Moscow’s rejection of Berlin’s “entirely unfounded accusations”.
Asked whether Moscow would be prepared to sever relations with Berlin, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko answered “maybe”, but said for now it was giving diplomacy a chance.
Von der Leyen was clear in her statement that the Leipzig attack had involved “military-grade material carried out by Russian operatives on European Union soil”.
“We will not tolerate it,” she said.
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said at the EU foreign ministers meeting at Wicklow, Ireland, that action could be taken on a European level against Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of ships carrying oil and other cargo aimed at avoiding EU sanctions.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said they were working on how to tighten enforcement of existing sanctions and added there was broad support for an EU visa entry ban on Russian ex-combatants as well as stricter visa limits on Russian tourists.
Several acts of suspected sabotage have been reported in Germany in the past 24 hours alone, including two attacks on electricity substations, one in the east and one in the west near Cologne.
North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul said an attack that targeted power lines at Bergheim in western Germany was deliberate, and whoever had carried out was attacking the country as a whole.
“We are investigating two possibilities: sabotage directed by a foreign state and left-wing extremism,” he said.
