An individual from Ukraine received a conviction in Germany on Tuesday for espionage-related charges. The court sentenced him to one year and three months in prison after he was accused of dispatching packages containing GPS trackers to Ukraine via a Ukrainian postal service in March 2025. The German news agency dpa reported that two other defendants, also Ukrainian citizens, were acquitted by the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court. Their names remained undisclosed under German privacy laws. The arrests took place last year in Germany and Switzerland.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office alleged the individuals were part of a sabotage scheme targeting transport routes, as stated by dpa. The presiding judge noted in the verdict that the convicted man had organized the shipment of two packages with GPS transmitters within Germany. He should have been aware of the potential use for surveilling targets as part of sabotage activities, according to dpa.
The accused was also reportedly ordered via an intermediary by a Russian government agency. According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, suspicions arose that a Russian intelligence service issued the directive through intermediaries situated in Mariupol, Ukraine, as reported by dpa. The aim was to gather details about package delivery transport routes and procedures.
Investigations suggested that the next phase for the defendants involved sending packages with devices that would activate during transit. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office indicated that such packages were intended to ignite in Germany or elsewhere en route to non-Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, potentially causing significant damage and undermining public security, as noted by dpa. Although the three men planned to dispatch these packages, they were discovered while in the preparatory stages of the attacks. The court found no concrete plans for sabotage acts.
The man who was sentenced will not serve additional time in prison as his sentence was considered fulfilled during pre-trial detention. In a prior case in 2024, Western security officials suspected Russian intelligence was behind a scheme involving incendiary devices in parcels sent on cargo planes to North America. The plan included incidents of a parcel catching fire at a mailing center in Germany and another igniting at a storage facility in England.
This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence tools.