Leipzig Airport Drone Incident: Unofficial Reports Indicate a Polish Connection

Last week at Leipzig Airport in eastern Germany, authorities detected a drone equipped with explosives near Ukrainian transport planes, with unofficial reports pointing to a Polish connection.

Drone Discovery at Leipzig Airport

Last week in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, a drone equipped with explosive material was detected at Leipzig Airport in eastern Germany. The drone was located near Ukrainian transport planes. According to the weekly “Die Zeit”, the unmanned aerial vehicle was intended to deliberately strike the wing of an Antonov parked on the tarmac beforehand. However, it did not explode, instead bouncing off the machine and falling onto the tarmac.

Leipzig Airport is an important hub for Western military aid to Ukraine, which is repelling Russian aggression. In 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Antonov corporation relocated its fleet there.

Cans with Explosives and the Russian Trace

As “Gazeta Wyborcza” reported on Wednesday, it cannot be excluded that the metal can with explosive material attached to the drone in Leipzig was brought into Poland two years ago.

According to “GW”, in 2024 a 27-year-old Ukrainian living in Katowice was recruited by a GRU (Russian military intelligence) officer via the Telegram service. Motivated by a desire for financial gain, he accepted an assignment consisting of digging up two cans of corn from one of the old cemeteries in Lithuania, bringing them to Poland, and hiding them by the A2 motorway near Zgierz.

ABW found the stash near Zgierz, but the cans were no longer there. “They were taken by an unidentified person to this day,” the daily reports. Meanwhile, on the Lithuanian necropolis, local services discovered more containers. Instead of corn, they contained powerful explosive material.

Packages with Detonators and Previous Fires

The purpose of his subsequent trips to Lithuania in 2024 was also, among other things, to send courier parcels containing massage pillows and cosmetics in which detonators and flammable substances were hidden. A few days later, the packages caught fire: one in a DHL warehouse in Birmingham, the second at Leipzig Airport, and the third in a truck at a transport base near Warsaw.

According to German media, investigators actually found DNA traces on the drone found at Leipzig Airport that matched traces secured after a fire at this airport two years ago.

In July 2024, a package sent from the Baltic states that was supposed to be redirected to an airplane caught fire at the local airport. According to the German counterintelligence, Russia was most likely behind the incident involving the air shipment equipped with a detonator. Only thanks to a fortunate coincidence and flight delays did the package cause a fire in the courier company’s warehouse rather than on board.