German prosecutors on Thursday said police in the Bavarian city of Bayreuth had arrested two men on suspicion of spying for Russia, the Deutsche Welle reported.

The two are accused, among other things, of acting as agents for sabotage purposes and of preparing explosives, the German Federal Prosecutor's Office announced in Karlsruhe.

What are the allegations?

Federal police arrested Dieter S. and Alexander J. and, along with Bavarian state police, searched the defendants' homes and workplaces.

The men were said to have scouted out potential attack targets, including US military bases in Germany.

S., who prosecutors say was in contact with a Russian secret service agent, is also charged with conspiring to cause an explosion and arson.

The accused is said to have been exchanging ideas with the agent since October 2023 about possible sabotage action.

The actions were intended, in particular, to undermine the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine.

S. allegedly told the Russian operative that he was prepared to carry out attacks on infrastructure used by the military as well as industrial sites in Germany.

According to the Spiegel news magazine, the facilities included the Grafenwöhr army base in Bavaria, where Ukrainian soldiers are trained in how to use US Abrams tanks.

How far had the plot gone?
S. had collected information about potential attack targets. He had scouted out some of the targeted objects, taking photos and videos of, for example, military transports and goods.

He is then said to have passed the collected information to his handler. Suspect J. is accused of helping him from March 2024 at the latest.

He is also accused of membership of a foreign terrorist organization based on a "strong suspicion" that he was a fighter for an armed unit of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine between December 2014 and September 2016.

The pro-Russian DPR claimed control over the Ukrainian administrative district of Donetsk in 2014, with the aim of secession from Ukraine, and started to engage in intensive clashes with the Ukrainian armed forces. The DPR is known to have repeatedly used violence against the civilian population.

Authorities say Germany, which has become one of Kyiv's biggest suppliers of military aid, is a key target for Russian spying operations.

"Our security authorities have prevented possible explosive attacks that were intended to target and undermine our military assistance to Ukraine," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in response to the arrests.

"It is a particularly serious case of alleged spy activity for [President Vladimir] Putin's criminal regime."

Germany's Interior Minister Marco Buschmann hailed an "investigative success in the fight against Putin's sabotage and espionage network."

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