With regard to the drone sabotage at Leipzig Airport on the night of August 5 and the subsequent chain of events, including today's press conference by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, the Kremlin has consistently promoted two complementary narratives.
The first accuses Germany of a “hastily fabricated provocation” aimed at escalating the situation “in Kyiv's interest” and continuing the Third Reich's historic policy of provocations.
The second targets Germany's domestic political agenda: the provocation against Russia is allegedly what Chancellor Merz needs in order to carry out political repression against pro-Russian forces, including the far-right Alternative for Germany.
The first official reaction came in a comment by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova:
“Moscow will respond to all anti-Russian decisions. They made up a pretext. At the same time, Berlin itself is fully implicated both in fueling the Ukrainian conflict and in involvement in terrorist attacks against civilians. The Russian House has long been a thorn in their side. So they went looking for something to seize on.” (1)
A short while later, in a personal post, she wrote (2) that Berlin “had declared a return to its roots, ritually demonstrating its intentions,” effectively comparing the “anti-Russian” measures to how the Third Reich had unleashed the Second World War.
Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov, for his part, said (3) on the evening of September 1, in response to Berlin's measures, that
“Germany is heading further down the path of escalation; the accusations against Russia following the Leipzig incident are backed by no argumentation whatsoever from Berlin.”
Leonid Slutsky, leader of the LDPR, a systemic party under Kremlin control, linked (4) Berlin's measures to Germany's domestic political agenda and growing fatigue with support for Ukraine:
“Clearly, Chancellor Merz is deliberately ratcheting up the level of escalation using the classic playbook of manufacturing ‘external threats’ to distract attention from domestic political problems ahead of Germany's fall election cycle” and “a cheap show staged for a European public that has doubts about the need to keep supporting the ‘war to the last Ukrainian.’”
State propaganda began preparing the narrative ground for Berlin's forthcoming response measures well in advance. For example, the national television channel Rossiya 1 aired (5) a promotional segment during its afternoon news broadcasts on September 1 for a feature “on the peculiarities of the German investigation and the latest provocations by enablers of present-day Nazis,” set to air during evening prime time.
The segment framed the drone incidents as a provocation aimed at helping the German establishment consolidate power:
“A failed attempt to torch a plane, or a successful Reichstag fire? Why does Merz need this right now? Is political repression awaiting Germany? What do 1933 and 2026 have in common?”
A day earlier, these narratives had already appeared in the print propaganda press: an article in Gazeta.Ru claimed (6) that “the incident could be used by Germany's leadership as a pretext for restricting the operations of Russian commercial enterprises and compiling lists of undesirable persons,” while the national newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published a piece on September 1 describing the incidents as “a classic provocation by Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND)” and “a pre-planned operation by Western and Ukrainian intelligence services aimed at discrediting Russia and tightening the screws on Russian citizens in Germany.” (7)
In all of these pieces, the key argument for Russia's non-involvement was the standard Kremlin propaganda formula that “if they had wanted to, they would have carried the sabotage through to completion”, which is presented as proof of Moscow's non-involvement.
The same narrative groundwork was underway in the pro-war Z-community. For example, the narrative that the incident was a provocation designed to blame Russia was consistently advanced by the Telegram channel Two Majors, which is linked to the security bloc:
“Contrived pretexts no longer surprise us. What is surprising is the speed with which the anti-popular governments of European countries are pushing their countries toward war” (8) (September 1),
and
“All these stories look openly fabricated: not one of the alleged acts of sabotage has caused significant damage to its supposed target. The goal is to accuse Russia of hybrid attacks in order to move to a new level of escalation, or to create yet another pretext for uniting European countries into a military alliance” (9) (August 31).
Z-bloggers were especially eager to draw parallels with the Third Reich: Two Majors wrote that “the German government remains true to its tradition of military provocations dating back to the 1930s [...] German capital is looking for pretexts to intensify the transfer of money from social needs to the military industry, into the pocket of the military lobby”(10) (September 1), while the Z-channel Release the Kraken Z! compared the current measures to the start of the Second World War: “exactly 87 years ago, Germany accused Poland in precisely the same way of a ‘treacherous attack’ on the radio station in Gleiwitz.”(11)
While most Z-authors covered the Leipzig incidents and Germany's response measures largely in a news format, the ultra pro-war Z-propagandist Yulia Vityazeva has, in recent days, actively amplified all of the official narratives: “a shameful and disgraceful provocation” (12), “the case is crudely fabricated and is falling apart before our eyes, yet the Germans are, as always, being told not to reflect on it but to spread it.” (13)
She has also become one of the main voices linking the accusations to Germany's domestic politics:
“Or to hell with the evidence, they just really need to close our embassy and try to scare voters ahead of their election so they don't vote for the AfD?” (14)
and
“Let's stop letting Russians into Germany, or they'll flock in for the election and turn the Germans against the government! And interfere in the vote!” (15)
Z-war correspondent Evgeny Lisitsyn voiced the same narrative on August 31, stating that
“the intensification of anti-Russian rhetoric is linked to the upcoming elections in Germany, where the ‘Alternative for Germany’ holds a strong position.” (16)
The previously mentioned Yulia Vityazeva called for a retaliatory escalation:
“If our forces were in Germany right now, not a single wretch would have dared to so much as squeak in our direction. They only understand force and are only afraid of whoever is stronger.”(17)
Boris Rozhin, author of the Z-channel Colonelcassad, likewise called for escalation:
“I would also go looking for the remaining German enterprises in Ukraine to deliver ‘parcels’ to.” (18)
The same point was echoed by Z-author Roman Alekhin, who has been designated a “foreign agent” for criticizing the authorities:
“Military factories keep burning across Europe, and this needs to continue. The price of military hardware deliveries, and the price of the question that Germans keep asking–‘what else does Europe need to do to get the Armed Forces of Ukraine to kill more Russians?’–needs to be high. [...] We've also learned how to do sabotage work. And most Germans don't want a big war.”(19)