Bundeswehr Rates the Russian Sabotage Risk 'Considerable', Its Second-Highest Level, After Explosive Is Found Near Wunstorf

The analysis reads the two drones together. Like the one found at Leipzig/Halle airport in August, the Wunstorf drone had carried explosive; Leipzig, the paper says, "could still be assessed as an indirect threat to the Bundeswehr", Wunstorf could not. Until now the Bundeswehr's security staff had placed the higher risk at sites where Ukrainian soldiers train and at naval bases and shipyards; the paper says the risk can no longer be confined to particular places and, citing the intelligence services, expects "a short-term worsening of the situation". A spokesman for the Operational Command said: "Owing to the heightened threat situation, the Bundeswehr currently assumes a considerable risk of sabotage." The ministry told dpa that wider protection of sites was being examined.

The grade is the kind of figure the counter-intelligence service's report left out, and it reached the public through a leak. In September that service's annual report said the sabotage threat had "increased considerably" and gave no case count; a position on a scale can at least be compared over time, if it is published again. For Leipzig, Berlin named Russia on 1 September, four weeks after the find; for Wunstorf, found five weeks before the rating was reported, the government has named no one. The forensics were still incomplete on 22 September. The armed forces have reached an assessment about Wunstorf that the government has not stated.