Germany Finally Opens Terror Investigation Into Infrastructure Sabotage That Left Berlin Districts Without Power For Days

Some 45,000 homes were left without power after an attack on transmission cables on Saturday, the latest such act of sabotage against a European city in recent years, but the first in which authorities showed any outward intent to figure out who is responsible.

Federal prosecutors took over control of the investigation on Tuesday evening of the Berlin power sabotage attack, seizing it from city prosecutors, and adding potential terrorism charges after targeted arson against an electricity cable bottleneck left 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses.

The final 19,000 homes were only reconnected on Wednesday morning, after having been deprived of power and, in some cases, heat for four days in freezing weather. The return of schools and businesses is being delayed to avoid overloading the new, temporary power lines laid to neighbourhoods including Wannsee, Zehlendorf, and Nikolassee.

Berlin’s regional government hailed the reconnection taking place ahead of schedule, saying this was possible because of the declaration of a major emergency, which allowed the central allocation of resources and effort. German Army field kitchens were deployed to Berlin to serve hot meals, supermarkets with backup generators opened their doors, and the nation’s THW civil defence body was activated.

Police patrols focussed on detecting criminal gangs taking advantage of the darkness to loot homes in wealthy areas.

The Berlin attack is only the latest in a long series of similar acts of sabotage targeting the delicate systems that underpin the modern world and urban life. As reported, the radical left, ultra-environmentalists, and Antifa have persistently claimed responsibility for these acts, but governments across Europe remarkably have shown little inclination to discover who is behind the strikes. Even months or years later, high-profile incidents like the Paris Olympics sabotage remain officially unsolved, and the perpetrators free from personal consequence.

This may be finally about to change, however, with prosecutors saying they are considering terrorism law charges for the new Berlin attack, alongside accusations of “unconstitutional sabotage”, arson, and disruption of public services. The nature of the allegedly left-wing authors of the sabotage has also become a subject of spirited public discussion for the first time, in contrast to the prevailing establishment narrative best described in an op-ed in Germany’s Die Welt, which argued that “left-wing extremism is an exaggerated problem” and consequently unworthy of investigation or study.

Extremism expert Professor Hendrik Hansen spoke out this week against this paradigm, stating: “It was a mistake that in the past, politicians focused very one-sidedly on right-wing extremism and neglected Islamism and left-wing extremism”. Berlin has become a “safe haven” for anarchists, he said, warning it would take “a considerable commitment of personnel in the security authorities” to take on such entrenched, rarely-monitored, and little-understood groups.

Indeed, the Vulkangruppe (Volcano Group), which claimed responsibility for this set of Berlin attacks, has been sabotaging power infrastructure and publishing public letters taking responsibility for the strikes for 15 years without the German authorities taking the time to discover who they are. As noted in that dispatch, in Germany, concern about power blackouts has for years been rubbished as the sole concern of right-wing conspiracy theorists, and a narrative used only to smear the nation’s transition to green energy.

That this has now happened has exposed a “credibility trap” for the authorities, it was stated, with the op-ed continuing:

…in Germany, after this terrorist attack, which for the first time in the country cut off a significant number of people from the power supply for an extended period, nothing is the same anymore. The bitter message of the attack: The authorities are not adequately prepared for hybrid warfare or professional sabotage – they are unable to fulfil their obligation to provide essential services.

Even now, a political element persists. That the hard-left may be responsible for attacks that put ordinary Germans at risk in the middle of winter — and police say they are treating the Volcano Group letter as genuine — is deeply uncomfortable for some, and accusations have surfaced that the group is a fake front for Russian saboteurs, trying to sow division by blaming environmentalists for their attacks. Claims and counter-claims have been posted to an infamous hard-left message board, seen by Breitbart News, alternatively insisting the attack was a genuine act of liberation from the evils of capitalistic imperialism, or the work of Putin “scum”.

The possibility of a split in the hard-left over the group and its actions was suggested by the fact that many of these statements were quickly deleted from the anarchist platform shortly after being posted.

Much angst has been expressed in mainstream media and government discussions in the past few days over just how open the German government is about where infrastructure is, with some expressing concern that this makes the job of the hard left too easy. Now, some politicians in positions of responsibility are saying the state should be more secretive in future.

Yet just how useful that would be is questionable: infrastructure like high-voltage power lines is not just vulnerable to terrorists, but to innocent building contractors digging for new projects or repairing roads. Secrecy would likely only increase the number of days of power lost a year to avoidable accidents.

It is also clear from other acts of sabotage by hard-left groups across Europe that they don’t struggle to recruit subject experts into their ranks who understand how systems work and know where to strike to cause the greatest chaos. That sabotage struck in exactly the worst place has been said time and time again in relation to both power and railway attacks in recent years, with police saying those responsible clearly had inside knowledge.

That doesn’t mean security can be improved without turning Germany into a secret state, however. Berlin mayor Kai Wegner said on Wednesday that while power network bottlenecks like the bridge carrying cables across a canal from a power station that was burnt on Saturday are inherently vulnerable, they can be protected. He said there are fewer than 100 such spots across the city and that from now on they would be fitted with video surveillance cameras, thermal detection systems, and other physical sensors in the hope of catching saboteurs in the act.

Regardless, wider risk persists. The deputy chief of Germany’s Federal Association for the Protection of Critical Infrastructure noted that while the country was able to survive this one — admittedly major — act of sabotage, if left-wing terrorists became more coordinated, the system couldn’t cope. He said: “If five or six metropolitan areas in Germany were attacked, as was recently the case in Berlin, and the power went out there, as we are currently experiencing, the resources of companies and emergency services would be completely exhausted; there would be no reserves left”.

This Berlin attack comes just months after another near-identical attack on the city, which saw Berlin endure the longest power cut since the Second World War. Infrastructure sabotage by the hard left and Russian agents alike has long been reported by Breitbart News.

Summarising this history and paraphrasing previous reports: 

50,000 homes were left without power in September 2025 after a hard-left group said it had burnt out a key power line, overwhelming backup systems as the cut lasted so long battery packs and generators became exhausted. Trams were left stranded on the roads, blocking major junctions and even basic systems like the emergency telephone numbers for the police and other emergency services ceased to function.

Local media said the attack was by “left-wing extremist attack with insider knowledge” on where exactly to set fires to cause maximum disruption.

Left-wing group “Some Anarchists” said ending the use of electricity altogether was their ultimate aim and that without it life would be full of “freedom without domination and exploitation. They stated: “Electricity is the primary source of energy that powers every machine and the ‘progress’ necessary to reproduce this current system”. The group was thought to be behind “dozens” of other such attacks.

The month before that , German railways experienced days of “massive” disruption as a ultra-anarchist set fire to cables rending a major line carrying intercity and international trains unusable.

As the first set of cable damage was repaired, a second fire was discovered nearby, again knocking the line out. Regional interior minister Herbert Reul said at a press conference: “Based on our authorities’ current assessment and understanding of this act of sabotage, it was left-wing extremists who are trying to bomb us back to pre-industrial times”.

A group calling themselves ‘Kommando’ claimed responsibility for the sabotage, and wrote in their manifesto:

The society we live in is in the process of devouring the entire planet. The mass conversion of natural ecosystems into dead products… [is] a core mechanism of the system… None of the proposed pseudo-solutions is capable of changing this problem. Not so-called renewable energies, nor communism, nor so-called green consumerism, nor any spiritual ‘transformations.’

The only solution is the complete dismantling of the technological-industrial system. We consider attacks on transportation, communications, and energy infrastructure, along with other forms of resistance, to be essential in this fight.

As reported by Breitbart News in 2022 there was another strikingly similar attack where “Backhaul communications cables concerned with the Germany Railway (Deutsche Bahn, DB) radio system, safety-critical equipment without which modern, tightly timetabled and high speed trains cannot safely operate, were “willfully and intentionally severed”.”

The perpetrators were said to have “very precise knowledge of the railway’s radio system” and two cables were cut simultaneously 340 miles apart. As expressed by a German Army General at the time of that attack, the purpose of such attacks are “not about an enemy army with soldiers and tanks attacking our country [but] pinpricks in the population that are intended to stir up uncertainty and shake confidence in our state” and “every substation, every power plant, every pipeline can be attacked”.

These “pinprick attacks” undermining public confidence in the everyday systems of Western life frequently target railways. Railway traffic was paralysed across France on the opening day of the Paris 2024 Olympics when suspected “ultra-left” activists who were said to have been “deliberate, very precise, extremely well-targeted”.

The following day, France was hit with a double-whammy when internet backbone cable networks were sabotaged in six locations nationwide simultaneously.

Cables supplying power to high-speed trains were sabotaged in in 2019 in Italy. As stated at the time, this attack appeared to coincide with a court ruling on a left-wing group said to have bombed a book shop.

In 2019, a radio transmitter was burnt in France. In 2020, 50,000 people lost internet access in greater Paris when cables were cut. This was said to be the culmination of a weeks-long campaign against information infrastructure.

In 2021, a series of attacks against telephone and internet services in France saw data company vehicles burnt, fibre optic cables cut, and a radio tower destroyed. Left-wingers took credit, saying: “it is not to protest against 5G in particular but in a broader context, fighting against the techno-world… We want to salute all the arsonists who are acting in the shadows at the moment and repeatedly beating this technological hell.”

In early 2022, the far-left was suspected over the sabotage of a power station and nine power lines over two nights. This left thousands of homes and a semiconductor factory without power. Days later, several French cities were left totally without internet after data cables in several locations were cut in the same night. The sabotage was done effectively enough, it was said the attackers would have to have “known the network”.