German Military Counter-Intelligence Says the Sabotage Threat "Increased Considerably" in 2025
Cologne, 14 September 2026
Key points
- The Militärischer Abschirmdienst (MAD), the Bundeswehr's counter-intelligence service under president Martina Rosenberg, published its annual report for 2025 on 14 September; the MAD law in force since 9 January requires a public report each year
- The report says the threat potential from sabotage, particularly through low-level agents, has "increased considerably", that "the hybrid threat situation in Germany has further intensified", and that Germany is a "prioritised reconnaissance target of Russian espionage activities" because of its position in NATO, the Bundeswehr's build-up and its new weapon systems
- Chinese services are recorded surveilling military infrastructure, including by drone overflight and attempted intrusion
- The service opened 610 new cases in 2025 against 524 the year before, 519 of them on suspected right-wing extremism, up from 413; it counted about 1,600 staff on 1 December 2025 and completed planning during the year for a permanent station in Lithuania, tied to the armoured brigade stationed there
Germany's military counter-intelligence service has published the first annual report required by its new statute, and it describes a sabotage threat that grew considerably in 2025 while giving no count of sabotage or espionage cases at all.
The published numbers concern extremism. Of 610 new cases, 519 were suspected right-wing extremism, a rise of about a quarter; the service identified eleven right-wing extremists, the same as in 2024, and 21 persons lacking constitutional loyalty, against 26. dpa reports that figures on espionage and sabotage were withheld to avoid disclosing intelligence. Security vetting, the service's volume business during a recruitment drive, closed more cases than it opened and reduced its backlog. The Lithuania station follows the brigade: a counter-intelligence presence abroad wherever a German formation is permanently based.
By its own published count, 85 per cent of the service's new caseload is domestic right-wing extremism, and the assessment that leads the report, Russian sabotage through low-level agents, is carried entirely by adjectives. That is a choice about disclosure, and it has a cost. The statute made the report public so that parliament and the public could weigh the threat, and the one part that cannot be weighed is the part that justifies the service's growth and its station on NATO's eastern flank. The civilian side has been more forthcoming: in the summer's attacks on the transmission grid the federal prosecutor took over the case and said in public that it had found no foreign direction. Signal No. 145 set the report beside that week's other German security items; read against the prosecutor's candour, the MAD's text asks to be taken on trust. A sabotage case count in next year's report, even a banded one, would be the evidence that the statute is working as intended.
Related · Sabotage and counter-intelligence in Germany
