In Response to Russian Aggression, Germany Should Trigger NATO’s Article 4

Western intelligence services have long had high confidence that Russian military intelligence was behind a sophisticated, transnational terrorist event inside Germany in the summer of 2024. Had the plot in Leipzig succeeded, a series of homemade explosive devices would have detonated aboard U.S.-bound private cargo aircraft, potentially igniting a crisis the like of which the world has not seen since the Soviet attack on a Korean airliner in 1983.

The German government now believes that Russia was also behind a second event in Leipzig last month, in which several explosive-laden drones were deployed against Ukrainian and private cargo aircraft in and around the Leipzig/Halle Airport. The attack bore a signature “known to us from other Russian hybrid operations and its war against Ukraine,” said German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt. All evidence implicates “people being involved who acted on behalf of Russian state entities,” he added.