Germany: Ukrainian man convicted of espionage arrested in Switzerland Keystone-SDA

A Ukrainian man who was arrested in Switzerland and extradited to Germany was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 months’ imprisonment for espionage. According to the prosecution, he had been planning arson attacks on behalf of Russia.

The Stuttgart Court of Appeal acquitted two other Ukrainian defendants. The three men had been arrested in Konstanz, Cologne and the Swiss canton of Thurgau. According to the German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office’s investigation, they were allegedly involved in a sabotage plot targeting the transport routes of an express courier service.

The convicted man had been arrested in Thurgau, northeastern Switzerland, in spring 2025 and extradited to Germany in December, after the Federal Court had rejected his appeal against his extradition.

According to the Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office, the three Ukrainians – aged 22, 25 and 30 – had attempted to send parcel bombs to Ukraine, which were intended to explode in Germany or at their destination, after spying on a Ukrainian parcel delivery service.

However, the investigation failed to prove that they were prepared to carry out such acts of sabotage using explosives, let alone that they were aware of any such plan, the Stuttgart Regional Court stated in a press release. The court did not uphold the prosecution’s request, which had sought prison sentences of between two and four years for the three defendants.

The convicted man, aged 30, is also already free, having served his entire sentence while in pre-trial detention and during his extradition from Switzerland, the statement reads.

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It is true that, in March 2025, the three did indeed take part in the dispatch – organised by a “Russian state body” – of two parcels containing a GPS tracker and car parts, via a Ukrainian postal service, the statement said. This enabled Moscow to “assess possible opportunities for acts of sabotage” targeting freight transport and infrastructure in Ukraine and Germany.

However, “it was not possible to establish that the defendants had conspired to commit a serious arson offence”, the court emphasised. Neither the examination of messages exchanged between them and with third parties, nor the searches of their homes, nor the hearing of witnesses and family members made it possible to substantiate the charges.

The 30-year-old defendant, on the other hand, had “a more detailed knowledge of the facts” and had been more deeply involved in the affair. On the instructions of a friend from Mariupol – a Ukrainian city occupied since the early months of the Russian invasion – he had arranged for the GPS trackers to be sent to Ukraine. It was also he who involved the other two defendants in the plot.

To justify the short length of the sentence, the court took into account his lack of a criminal record, his partial confessions and the fact that the operation was still “a long way from any acts of sabotage”.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Germany has been on high alert in the face of a resurgence of espionage, sabotage and destabilisation operations on its territory, most of which are attributed to Russia.

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Translated from Italian, reviewed by an English Department journalist. 

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