German security services are investigating a plot to conduct a politically motivated attack, possibly directed by a foreign power, that was linked to guns found stashed in a forest on the edge of Berlin, the interior minister said on Friday.
While Alexander Dobrindt, the interior minister, was careful not to point a finger at any nation, the news came amid increased fear of destabilizing “hybrid” attacks that European governments have blamed, publicly and privately, on Russia.
“This case shows that we are working on the assumption that the risk level is high,” Mr. Dobrindt said at a news conference, noting that he had upgraded the threat level this year to high from abstract.
The German police are investigating a man who is believed to be a low-level operative involved in hiding the two handguns and ammunition found near Berlin. The man, whose name and nationality have not been made public, is in a Romanian jail in connection with a separate matter.
The authorities did not release details about the alleged plot, but Germany’s federal prosecutor, who is overseeing the case, is investigating the man for possible foreign agent activity and the preparation of a serious crime endangering the state, both criminal offenses that carry significant prison time if he is charged and convicted.
Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, said that if the evidence showed the Kremlin was responsible, the German government would face a difficult balance over what to say publicly and what action to take in response.
“On the one hand, you want to make clear that it has consequences so that Putin doesn’t see it as a sign of weakness,” Professor Neumann said of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. “On the other hand, you don’t want to get into a direct conflict with Russia.”
This month, an explosives-bearing drone was found on the ground of the Leipzig-Halle Airport, a major hub for flying supplies to Ukraine. Security video footage from the airport showed that the drone had hit the wing of a parked Ukrainian transport plane before falling to the ground, but it had failed to explode.
The German authorities have not assigned blame for that episode.
In November, a bomb damaged a Polish railway used to deliver supplies to Ukraine, and Polish prosecutors later linked the attack to a sabotage campaign by people working for a Russian intelligence service. Western officials have blamed Russia for several other attacks, including a series of drone incursions into Eastern European airspace, GPS jamming in Europe and a plot to place incendiary devices on cargo planes.
Mr. Dobrindt’s news conference was called after a consortium of news outlets on Friday revealed the weapons cache and the authorities’ suspicions about what it meant. According to Professor Neumann, the unusual news conference might have served to remind Germans, many of whom see Russia in a favorable light, that they really do face hybrid threats from the East, even if Russia was not explicitly named.
“People have not really been connecting the dots,” he said.
The guns were found by the police and Germany’s domestic intelligence service in October; officials have not said what led to their discovery. The authorities rendered the weapons inoperable, tagged them with GPS chips to track their movement, returned them to the hiding place and kept it under surveillance.
But nobody ever showed up to pick up the guns, possibly because they had realized the authorities were watching the area.
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