For months, two disabled pistols lay in the ground near Berlin while investigators watched, and nobody came. On Friday, August 21, 2026, Germany’s interior minister explained why that silence mattered.
Alexander Dobrindt told reporters that federal prosecutors had opened an investigation on suspicion of preparing a serious act of violence that threatens national security. “This case demonstrates that we are operating under a high threat level,” he said. He would not confirm that Russia was behind the cache, but said he could not rule out the involvement of “foreign powers”.
What was found
The stash, in a wooded area on the edge of the capital, held two handguns and ammunition. Officials said the domestic intelligence service learned about it last October, and agents located it with help from Berlin state police, following a tip. Police rendered the guns unusable but left them where they were, then monitored the spot electronically for months. Nobody approached. Dobrindt said investigators concluded that whoever set up the cache had learned it was found, which made it “dead”.
The security authorities suspect the weapons were meant for attacks. Reports by Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and WDR went further and said they were meant to enable targeted killings for Moscow. Dobrindt declined to endorse that claim.
The suspect in Romania
Prosecutors are looking into a man held in Romania, on suspicion of espionage. According to Dobrindt he is also held over planned parcel bomb attacks there, and that will weigh on any extradition. The minister called him a “low-level agent” and did not give his nationality. Several similar operatives, including a person from Kazakhstan, had been detained this year, he said, and such people typically do not know who sits above them.
Der Spiegel reported that German authorities are checking for a link to a sabotage campaign against Ukrainian supply routes that has been blamed on Russia. Polish security officials last year arrested several people accused of planning to mail incendiary devices, some parcels reportedly posted from Romania. In 2024, a firebomb in a DHL parcel exploded in a freight container at Leipzig airport.
A pattern of warnings
For months, Germany’s domestic intelligence chief, Sinan Selen, has been warning that Russian services are planning more aggressive operations on German soil. The reported targets include arms-industry executives, exiled opposition figures and prominent supporters of Ukraine. Die Zeit reported this month that Russian services plotted an attack on Stefan Thumann, head of the drone maker Donaustahl; a Ukrainian man and a Romanian woman were arrested this spring. In 2024 reports emerged that a plot to kill Rheinmetall’s Armin Papperger had been foiled.
Dobrindt said earlier in August that Germany is a “daily target of hybrid warfare”, after the Leipzig airport drone carrying explosives. Moscow called that accusation a “hastily fabricated provocation”. Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in sabotage or intimidation in EU states, and its Berlin embassy and the federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the cache.
Sources
- Germany investigates Russia links to weapons cache discovery, reports say – BBC News
- Germany investigates foreign agents after weapons cache found near Berlin
- Gun stash in German forest believed to be linked to Russia, say reports | The Guardian
- Germany investigates arms cache found in woods near Berlin | DW
