Explosion at a train station in Germany, Zelensky announced: "Ukraine is closing Putin's skies"

German police were forced this morning (Wednesday) to completely close the train station in the city of Augsburg in the south of the country, after one object exploded at the site and another suspicious object was found nearby. Two people, an 18-year-old young man and a 17-year-old young woman, citizens of Ukraine, were slightly injured, and in addition, windows were broken. The incident occurred after an attack carried out yesterday by unidentified parties against a power plant in the German state of Brandenburg.

According to reports from Germany, the unidentified object exploded this morning in a building passageway, near a jewelry store, and bomb disposal experts are currently investigating its nature. The German newspaper "Bild" reported that the explosion was caused by a detonated hand grenade. Train traffic to and from the station was completely stopped, and car and bus traffic around the station was also disrupted. Augsburg is a city of 308,000 residents located in the state of Bavaria, about 78 kilometers northwest of Munich, and is considered an important regional transport hub.

The explosion at the train station in Augsburg came a day after Germany revealed an act of sabotage on the electricity infrastructure in the state of Brandenburg in the east, an incident in which improvised explosive devices were also found at the scene. That sabotage occurred at the substation in the town of Turnow-Preilack, near the large coal-fired power plant Jänschwalde, which with a capacity of 1,500 megawatts is the fourth largest in all of Germany.

According to the police, they received the report about the incident yesterday around 8:00 in the morning, and subsequently found at least one incendiary object at the scene that did not explode. The police statement did not clarify how the damage to the infrastructure was caused, which, according to the company operating the local network, caused a short power outage there. The network operator noted that unidentified parties caused damage to "several power lines" at the substation, but did not specify the nature and extent of the damage.

"Bild" reported that the attack in Brandenburg involved the use of "improvised rockets", but hinted that it might be fireworks and noted that bomb squads were called to the scene to deal with any components left there. According to "Bild", the police confirmed that at least one explosion occurred at the scene. This report joins a report in the local newspaper Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, which quoted security and industry sources saying that emergency teams found at the scene "several components for rockets equipped with explosives". The newspaper reported that the substation was "hit more than once", and that the suspicion is that the goal of the attack was to cause a widespread power outage.

The authorities in Germany did not state yesterday who might be behind the attack, and regarding today's explosion, this is also the central question. One possibility that some pondered yesterday is that these are messengers of Russia, seeking to deepen the "hybrid war" it is waging against its rivals in Europe, and to take revenge for Berlin's support for Ukraine during the war against Moscow. It should be noted that the announcement about the damage to the power grid in Brandenburg was made on the same day that Germany held Russia responsible for the explosive drone found last month near a Ukrainian cargo plane loaded with military ammunition at Leipzig Airport.

Another possibility is that anarchist activists from the far left are responsible for placing the devices and suspicious objects. Only at the beginning of the year did such activists cause damage to the electricity infrastructure in Berlin, damage that left entire neighborhoods in the southwest of the capital in darkness for several days in the peak of the cold. An organization called the "Volcano Group" claimed responsibility for that attack, claiming that its goal was to protest against the fuel industry. The same organization was also suspected of being behind an arson that disrupted production at the "Tesla" electric car factory in Berlin in 2024.

Zelensky: "Russia's war is closing its own skies"

The explosions and acts of sabotage in Germany come against the backdrop of growing tension between Berlin and other countries on the continent and Russia. Apart from the German announcement that Moscow is behind the landing of the explosive drone near the Ukrainian plane loaded with explosives at Leipzig Airport, an event that could have led to a mass disaster, and which followed a long series of mysterious drone penetrations into airports in Western and Northern Europe, yesterday Poland accused that a deliberate act of sabotage was likely the cause of the fire that occurred the day before yesterday at the WB Electronics company factory in the city of Skarżysko-Kamienna in the center of the country — a factory that produces drones used by the Ukrainian army. Last week, Russia also explicitly threatened to attack factories in the UK that supply weapons to Kyiv.

Last night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled a further escalation that could occur in the war, when he warned airlines and insurance companies that the presence of Ukrainian drones has made Russia's skies dangerous for them, and that in practice they are closed to flights. "Today, we want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who still operates in major Russian airports: Russia's skies are becoming completely dangerous," Zelensky said in his recorded nightly speech. He noted that Ukraine does not pose a threat to civil aviation, "but drones will continue to be found in Russia's skies, and full attention must be paid to this. Although the authorities in Russia do not report this properly, Russian airspace will be closed de facto. The war that Russia started is closing its own skies".

Ukraine, let us recall, has dramatically increased the drone attacks it carries out in the Russian rear in recent months, as part of what Kyiv calls "the campaign to bring the war to the Russian citizen", a campaign whose goal is to cause pressure from the residents of Russia, including the Russian elite, on the Putin regime to stop the war. As part of the drone attacks, Ukraine has hit dozens of oil and fuel facilities and warehouses of online trading companies, led by the e-commerce giant Wildberries, and thus caused losses of billions of dollars to the Russian economy and a shortage of fuel at stations across the country. Russia, for its part, is conducting its own air operation against Ukrainian cities, and this morning there were also reports of powerful explosions in the capital Kyiv.

While European and American airlines do not fly over Russia's skies due to the war, Russian airspace is used by airlines from countries such as China, Turkey, the UAE, and other countries in the Gulf. American airlines have previously explained that the use of Russian airspace gives these companies an advantage by saving them time and fuel. The full extent of the risk posed by Ukrainian drones to aviation over Russia — the largest country in the world in terms of land area — is not clear, but there have been fatal cases in the region in the past where civilian aircraft were attacked by mistake. For example, in 2024, two Russian missiles exploded near an Azerbaijan Airlines plane after Ukrainian drones penetrated Russian airspace. The explosion of the missiles led to the crash of the plane and the deaths of 38 people. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia was also responsible for the accidental downing of the Malaysian passenger plane that crashed in 2014 in eastern Ukraine. The plane, which was on its way from Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, was flying at the time in an area where pro-Russian rebels were fighting against the Ukrainian army, and the rebels fired a missile at it and hit it. All 298 passengers and crew members were killed.

The aviation risk consulting firm Osprey Flight Solutions stated in an alert to its clients that although most of Ukraine's drone and missile attacks are expected to occur within a range of up to 300 km from the border between the countries, it is almost certain that attacks deeper into Russian territory will also occur throughout 2026, including near Moscow and St. Petersburg. "There is also a real possibility that the frequency of Ukrainian attacks will continue to increase in the short term deep inside Russian territory," the alert stated. "The assessment is that errors in judgment and/or misidentification are a plausible scenario in areas related to the conflict in Ukraine".

This morning, the Russian Minister of Transport responded to Zelensky's threats and said that Russia will not allow Ukraine to seriously disrupt civil aviation activity in its skies. "Of course we are preparing for this and taking all these threats into account," said Minister Andrey Nikitin. "We are constantly improving flight safety and airport security requirements, and we have solutions for all of this. We have an answer to all the threats that the terrorists are making. We are working in close contact with the Ministry of Defense and the National Guard of Russia, and I believe that we will not allow any significant disruption in civil aviation".

Last night, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Zelensky's threat sounds as if Ukraine intends to commit "state terrorism", and added that if Kyiv indeed "closes" the Russian skies — Moscow will find a way to respond.