BERLIN: Germany said Wednesday it was monitoring changing Russian sabotage tactics, after media reports linked a plan to plant explosive devices on cargo planes to low-level operatives hired by Moscow.
European intelligence services believed that Russia was behind the plot, which saw parcels explode at two DHL depots last July, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily and public broadcasters WDR and NDR reported.
Several people implicated in the operation were believed to be “disposable” agents with no official position in the Russian intelligence services, according to the report.
Such low-level agents were typically recruited via messaging apps to carry out tasks for money, the report said.
Quizzed about the incidents at a regular press conference, German interior ministry spokeswoman Sonja Kock said investigations were “continuing intensively.”
Kock declined to go into detail but said German authorities were “closely observing the means Russian services are now resorting to,” including the use of “so-called low-level agents.”
Kock also told the briefing that Russian intelligence services operating in Germany had been “recently weakened by the expulsion of numerous agents.”
Another interior ministry official later told AFP that she was referring to the April 2022 expulsion of 40 Russian diplomats who were intelligence officers, and further departures of diplomats the following year.
The explosions at DHL depots in Leipzig, Germany and Birmingham in Britain have been described by Germany’s domestic intelligence chief Thomas Haldenwang as a “lucky accident” because of the limited impact.
Testifying before a parliamentary committee in October, Haldenwang said “there would have been a crash” if the parcels had exploded mid-flight on planes.
Kock said Wednesday that the “danger of sabotage... has increased significantly in Germany since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.”
German authorities were doing “everything in our power to thwart... Russian espionage, sabotage and cyber-attacks,” she said.
Germany says monitoring Russia’s use of ‘disposable’ agents
https://arab.news/8ncrb
Germany says monitoring Russia’s use of ‘disposable’ agents
- European intelligence services believed that Russia was behind the plot
- Kock declined to go into detail but said German authorities were “closely observing the means Russian services are now resorting to”
EU leaders begin India visit ahead of ‘mother of all deals’ trade pact
- Antonio Luis Santos da Costa, Ursula von der Leyen are chief guests at Republic Day function
- Access to EU market will help mitigate India’s loss of access to US following Trump’s tariffs
New Delhi: Europe’s top leaders have arrived in New Delhi to participate in Republic Day celebrations on Monday, ahead of a key EU-India Summit and the conclusion of a long-sought free trade agreement.
European Council President Antonio Luis Santos da Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in India over the weekend, invited as chief guests of the 77th Republic Day parade.
They will hold talks on Tuesday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the EU-India Summit, where they are expected to announce a comprehensive trade agreement after years of stalled negotiations.
Von der Leyen called it the “mother of all deals” at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week — a reference made earlier by India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal — as it will create a market of 2 billion people.
“The India-EU FTA has been a long time coming as negotiations have been going on between the two for more than a decade. Some of the red lines that prevented the signing of the FTA continue to this date, but it seems that the trade negotiations have found a way around it,” said Anupam Manur, professor of economics at the Takshashila Institution.
“The main contentious issue remains the Indian government’s desire to protect the farmers and dairy producers from competition and the European Union’s strict climate-based rules and taxation. Despite this, both see enormous value in the trade deal.”
India already has free trade agreements with more than a dozen countries, including Australia, the UAE, and Japan.
The pact with the EU would be its third in less than a year, after it signed a multibillion CEPA (comprehensive economic partnership agreement) with the UK in July and another with Oman in December. A week after the Oman deal, New Delhi also concluded negotiations on a free trade agreement with New Zealand, as it races to secure strategic and trade ties with the rest of the world, after US President Donald Trump slapped it with 50 percent tariffs.
The EU is also facing tariff uncertainty. Earlier this month Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on several EU countries unless they supported his efforts to take over Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark.
“The expediting factor in the trade deal is the unilateral and economically irrational trade decisions taken by their biggest trading partner, the United States,” Manur told Arab News.
Being subject to the highest tariff rates, India has been required to sign FTAs with other major economies. Access to the EU market would help mitigate the loss of access to the US.
The EU is India’s largest trading partner in goods, accounting for about $136 billion in the financial year 2024-25.
Before the tariffs, India enjoyed a $45 billion trade surplus with the US, exporting nearly $80 billion. To the EU’s 27 member states, it exports about $75 billion.
“This can be sizably increased after the FTA,” Manur said. “Purely in value terms, this would be the biggest FTA for India, surpassing the successful FTAs with the UK, Australia, Oman and the UAE.”
