A Ukrainian national has been convicted in Germany on espionage charges and sentenced to one year and three months in prison. The Stuttgart Higher Regional Court found him guilty of sending packages containing GPS trackers to Ukraine via a Ukrainian postal service in March 2025. Two other Ukrainian defendants were acquitted. The men's names were not disclosed in line with German privacy laws.
According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the defendants were allegedly part of a sabotage plot targeting the postal service's transport routes. The presiding judge stated that the convicted man had arranged for the shipment of two packages containing GPS transmitters in Germany and must have known they could be used to spy on targets for acts of sabotage. The defendant also realized he had received the order through an intermediary from a Russian government agency.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office alleged that a Russian intelligence service issued the order via intermediaries from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The aim was to gather information on the parcel delivery service's routes and transport procedures.
Investigators said the next step would have been to send packages containing incendiary devices that would ignite during transport. Such packages were intended to ignite in Germany or elsewhere en route to parts of Ukraine not occupied by Russia, causing damage and undermining the population's sense of security.
The three men had agreed to send the packages, but they were exposed during the preparatory stages. The court found no concrete plans for acts of sabotage. The convicted man will not serve prison time as his sentence has been served during pretrial detention.
In a previous case in 2024, Western security officials suspected Russian intelligence was behind a plot to place incendiary devices on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England.