Prosecutors in the eastern German state of Saxony announced that investigators have found 21 explosive devices near high-voltage power lines, the latest escalation in a wave of sabotage targeting the country's electricity infrastructure.
Nine of the homemade devices turned up over the weekend near power lines south of the Graustein substation in the district of Goerlitz, Saxony prosecutors and police said in a joint statement Monday. That brought the total to 21 devices recovered as part of the broader grid sabotage investigation.
The discoveries cap a week of alarming incidents across Germany's power network. Police on Friday said they were hunting a man who had sent letters claiming responsibility for a series of sabotage attacks on the grid. Investigators found what appeared to be explosives at his home. He remains at large.
Goerlitz, a rural district along the Polish border, is the epicenter of the explosive finds. But the trouble stretched far beyond Saxony last week.
In Berlin, a fire broke out at a transformer substation earlier on Monday. Police investigated, but initial findings pointed to a technical fault rather than sabotage. Spiegel cited Police Commissioner Barbara Slowik Meisel as the source of that determination.
Hundreds of miles to the west, in the city of Wesel, a different kind of breach raised alarms. Bild newspaper reported that police there launched major assessment operations after the security fence around a transformer substation was found cut open. Whether the Wesel incident is connected to the Saxony explosive devices remains unclear.
Taken together, the events paint a picture of a national power grid under persistent threat, with authorities scrambling to keep pace.
The sabotage wave did not start last week. In August, a drone attacked infrastructure near Leipzig and Halle, also in eastern Germany. The German government formally blamed Russia for that incident.
No official statement has linked the 21 explosive devices or the letter-writing suspect to a foreign state actor. But the proximity in time and geography to the Russian-attributed drone strike hangs over the investigation. German authorities have not publicly addressed whether they see a connection.
The identity of the man who claimed responsibility by letter has not been released. What specific attacks he took credit for, and what evidence ties him, if any, to the Graustein-area devices, remain open questions that prosecutors have not answered.
The scale of the threat is worth stating plainly. Twenty-one explosive devices placed near high-voltage power lines represent a coordinated effort to damage or destroy critical infrastructure. Nine of those devices appeared in a single weekend. The man who wrote letters claiming responsibility for grid attacks had apparent explosives at his home, and walked away before police could detain him.
German police have not disclosed whether any of the 21 devices detonated or were rendered safe. They have not said how many personnel are assigned to the manhunt or the broader investigation. The joint statement from prosecutors and police acknowledged the discoveries but left major gaps unfilled.
A country that spent years dismantling its own energy independence, shuttering nuclear plants and leaning on Russian gas, now faces a grid that someone is actively trying to blow up. The question is not whether Germany's infrastructure is vulnerable. The 21 bombs answered that. The question is whether its government can protect what remains.
