Two handguns and some ammunition, hidden in woods on the edge of Berlin. That was the haul when German officials went looking last year, and this August the story became public: investigators suspect the cache was meant for agents working for Moscow.
German media reports on 21 August, from the broadcasters NDR and WDR and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, said officials got word of a carefully prepared hiding spot in Brandenburg, the state that surrounds the capital. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt gave a slightly different timeline. He said the domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, became aware of a possible cache in woods on Berlin’s outskirts last October, and that officials found it with help from the Berlin State police.
A trap that caught no one
What happened next reads like a stakeout. Specialists quietly disabled the weapons, Der Spiegel reported, then put them back and watched the site for months. Dobrindt confirmed the weapons were rendered inoperable and the cache placed under surveillance, but no one came near it. The media reports suggest whoever set it up probably sensed the exposure.
The BfV believes the hideout was created on orders from Russian secret services. German security authorities are now convinced the guns were being stored for agents meant to carry out “kinetic operations” for Moscow in Germany, assassinations among them. Dobrindt would not confirm the Russian link himself, though he allowed that “the involvement of foreign powers” could not be excluded.
The Romania connection
Federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe opened a case, suspecting a plot for a grave act of violence that would threaten the state. Police in Romania have a suspect in custody. Dobrindt described him as a “low-level agent” and declined to give his nationality. The man is being held over parcel bomb attacks planned in Romania, the minister said, and that will weigh on any extradition. Other operatives of this type have been picked up this year, he added, including one from Kazakhstan.
Spiegel reported that investigators are also looking at whether the cache connects to a suspected Russian sabotage campaign aimed at logistics routes that support Ukraine. In Poland, several people were arrested last year on suspicion of posting parcels packed with incendiary devices or detonators, and some of them allegedly operated out of Romania.
BfV president Sinan Selen has warned for months that Russia could target specific people. He has named arms makers, opposition figures living in exile and backers of Ukraine as possible targets. The reports recall the 2024 CNN account of a foiled plot against Armin Papperger, the Rheinmetall chief executive, which NATO confirmed in January 2025. A German court gave Vadim Krasikov, a Russian, a life term in 2021 for a killing in a Berlin park, ruling that Moscow ordered it. A prisoner exchange later set him free.
“This case demonstrates that we are operating under a high threat level,” Dobrindt said.
Sources
- Weapons cache linked to Russia reportedly found near Berlin – Ukrainska Pravda
- German authorities investigate suspected Russian-linked weapons cache near Berlin – Spiegel (via Hromadske)
- Germany investigates Russia links to weapons cache discovered in woods, reports say – BBC (via MyJoyOnline)
