Russia has issued an ominous warning after Germany said the nation was behind an airport drone attack last month in Leipzig.
A drone rigged with explosives and an ‘unknown substance’ was found next to a Ukrainian cargo plane in Leipzig.
Police called a bomb squad to conduct a remote detonation, and there were no injuries or fatalities. Leipzig-Halle Airport also serves commercial aircraft passengers, but in a separate area.
It failed to explode, but investigators say a second drone collided with a cargo aircraft nearby.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said today: ‘Leipzig, the airport. They found some drone there. They said it was a Russian drone, and no one bothered to investigate.
‘This is, in essence, the beginning of a real war.’
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German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said he is closing the Russian consulate in Bonn and the contract for the Russian House in Berlin.
Lavrov added: ‘They expelled the Consulate General from Bonn and announced that they had terminated the agreement. The Russian House in Berlin is being closed.
I recall that before the start of World War II, or more precisely the Great Patriotic War, the Germans also closed their diplomatic missions.
‘He is essentially declaring war on us. And the lessons of history have not been learned at all. It turns out that these metastases of Nazism are beginning to break through. This is a dangerous phenomenon.’
Russia has been suspected of multiple plots to set fire to or detonate explosives near cargo.
Despite widespread evidence proving Russian involvement, the nation has denied any involvement.
In 2024, a DHL plane flying from Leipzig Airport to Lithuania crashed, killing one and injuring three others.
That incident came just months after Russian-backed saboteurs were believed to be behind a firebomb which detonated at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham – dubbed a ‘test run’ by spies from the country.
Before the blaze in Birmingham, a near-identical fire occurred at a DHL warehouse in Leipzig, Germany – where the plane that crashed near Lithuania departed from – with another suspect package bound for a flight thought to be the source of the blaze.
European authorities, including MI6, previously alleged that Russia is behind the expanding campaign of sabotage on planes.
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