German national arrested for sabotage in Russia

BERLIN — A German-Russian dual citizen was detained in Russia and accused of preparing to blow up railway tracks for Ukraine, Russia’s security agency said Tuesday.

“In November 2024, for the promised money reward by his handler, he was preparing a sabotage on a section of the railroad in Nizhny Novgorod using the improvised explosive device found in his possession,” Russia’s security agency, the FSB, said in a statement. Nizhny Novgorod is a city in western Russia and an industrial hub.

In response, the German foreign ministry said in a statement: “This morning, the German embassy in Moscow became aware of the arrest of a suspected German national and is advocating consular access to the person concerned.”

However, this might prove difficult. “Russia treats dual nationals exclusively as Russian nationals and therefore generally refuses consular access on the grounds of Russian nationality,” the ministry added.

The arrest follows the detention of another German national last month in Russia, also on charges of sabotage. The FSB alleged he was working for Ukraine and detained him in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

“The risk of arrests in Russia is very high — even for German nationals. We have been warning about this for some time in our travel and security advice,” the German foreign ministry said in its statement.

A large-scale prisoner swap in August, one of the most complex since the Cold War, saw Moscow release 16 Americans, Germans and Russian dissidents in exchange for eight Russians, including a convicted murderer, imprisoned in five different countries.

This led human rights organizations and opposition politicians in Germany to warn that such a swap could provide extra leverage to the Russian regime to detain innocent people in future.

Eva Hartog contributed to this report.