German industry body BDI warns of growing Russian sabotage against companies
Germany's BDI industry federation expects the threat of Russian sabotage to persist and attack methods to diversify, saying companies are not being targeted at random.
Archive image · Photo: Assenmacher / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
The Federation of German Industries (BDI) has warned of growing Russian sabotage against companies in Germany. Industry expects the threat to persist and attack methods to become more varied, BDI deputy director general Holger Loesch told the Handelsblatt newspaper. Companies are not being targeted by chance, he said.
Russian influence and sabotage activities are no longer an abstract scenario, Loesch said. The warning means businesses themselves now echo security agencies in seeing a rising danger to plants, supply chains and critical infrastructure.
According to a Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) assessment, 165 suspected sabotage cases were recorded nationwide through the end of August 2026, compared with 320 in all of last year. In early September, electrical substations in Bergheim in North Rhine-Westphalia and Turnow-Preilack in Brandenburg were also attacked; the Bergheim attack did not cause power outages.