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Germany Probes Suspected Sabotage After Explosive Drone Appears Beside Ukraine’s Antonov Aircraft
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An Antonov Airlines cargo aircraft, beside which an explosive-laden drone was discovered at Germany's Leipzig/Halle Airport, had been loaded with military ammunition, according to a confidential police report.
The detail emerged from a joint investigation by German public broadcasters WDR and NDR and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, published on August 6.
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The ammunition had been brought from France to Leipzig shortly beforehand and was likely intended for onward shipment, the joint reporting found. Airport staff first noticed the drone around 11:42 p.m. on August 4, hovering at low altitude between two Antonov Airlines cargo planes operated by the Ukrainian state carrier.
The police report noted "contact between the drone and an employee," after which the device came to rest on the ground. The airport's drone-detection sensors had not registered it beforehand.
Germany's Federal Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, described the case as a "new level of threat" and a "hybrid attack scenario," adding that the drone had probably been modified to bypass countermeasures.
Investigators established from surveillance footage that the drone had entered from the south at 7:28 p.m. and landed on the apron. Surveillance footage did not show it taking off again, though a worker later spotted it hovering between the parked planes.
Attached to it was a fist-sized explosive package that repeated analyses identified most likely as Semtex, a compound used for military and industrial purposes. Explosives technicians from Saxony's state criminal police removed the detonator for further examination.
Leipzig/Halle ranks as a major military logistics hub, and NATO transports pass through it. Ukraine has relied on the airport as a fallback point for moving military cargo since Russia launched its full-scale war in February 2022. Germany's Defense Ministry indicated that no Bundeswehr transports were passing through the airport at the time.
Who was behind the suspected attack has not been established.
After the drone was found, operations were briefly suspended, forcing a DHL cargo plane arriving from Marseille to abort its landing. Internal security reports state the aircraft struck an unidentified object at roughly 500 kilometers per hour near the airport perimeter, possibly a second drone.
The DHL plane, also carrying hazardous goods, continued to Hannover-Langenhagen, where experts found damage to its nose and tail. A negative biological swab made a bird strike unlikely, and the crew has since been questioned, with investigators planning to decode the flight recorder.
Earlier, on August 6, the threat to Ukraine's air-cargo operations in Germany surfaced with the discovery of a suspected explosive drone beside one of Antonov Airlines' AN-124 aircraft, the world's largest mass-produced cargo plane.
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