Leipzig was a warning shot. Here’s what real deterrence against Kremlin terror would look like
The wave of Russian state terrorism now breaking over Europe is quite different from the leftwing Baader-Meinhof group of the 1970s. It is part of a big plan to break Nato, yet Germany (and Spain, France, and Belgium) is not taking this seriously. This sends a clear message to the Kremlin: keep attacking us, writes Edward Lucas.
Germany is under attack, but it does not know how to respond.
The news that the suspected perpetrators of the potentially fatal attack on Leipzig airport last month are a Russian linked to that country’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, and a Belarusian, highlights both gaps in defence and the lack of deterrence.
The Russian (who entered from Turkey and then left for Serbia) was identified on arrival as having GRU connections.
But the German authorities lacked the resources to put him under surveillance. (Many will find it outrageous that someone with this background was allowed to enter the Schengen zone at all.)
The Belarusian (also unnamed, in accordance with German privacy law) entered via Latvia. He had no known intelligence connections, though he had criminal records in Lithuania and Finland.
Again, why let someone like that into your country? This person was most likely a ‘throwaway’ agent, hired for cash to carry out the legwork: putting 1.8kg of powerful plastic explosive on drones aimed at a Ukrainian transport aircraft, laden with 25,000 litres of aviation fuel.
Edward Lucas is a former senior editor at The Economist, founder and director of the Baltic International Security Centre think-tank, and a regular writer on defence, security and espionage for The Times and Foreign Policy. He is the author of The New Cold War (2008) and Deception (2011).
