Berlin is cowardly to deny that Putin is attacking Germany

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit · September 2, 2026

When you grow up in Flint, you learn early that the people in charge will use a very specific kind of language to hide the fact that you’re being poisoned.

When you grow up in Flint, you learn early that the people in charge will use a very specific kind of language to hide the fact that you’re being poisoned. They didn’t call it a crisis while the lead was leaching into the pipes; they called it "administrative oversight" or "budgetary constraints." They use sterile words to mask violent realities.

Now, I’m watching the German government play a similar semantic game with Vladimir Putin. Chancellor Friedrich Merz says, "We are not at war, but we are no longer at peace." Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt claims Germany is the "daily target of hybrid warfare," yet insists we aren't "at war."

Let’s stop the pretending. When explosive-laden drones are found in the security area of Leipzig/Halle Airport—a hub for military aid to Ukraine—and rockets carrying conductive material are fired into the Brandenburg power grid to trigger short circuits, you are not "no longer at peace." You are being attacked by a foreign state. To call this "hybrid activity" is to treat a house fire like a heating bill; it’s a refusal to name the arsonist while the curtains are melting.

The Luxury of Semantic Games

The facts, as reported by DW and RFI English, are stark. On August 4, a drone equipped with explosives was discovered near Ukrainian cargo planes in Leipzig. Minister Dobrindt noted the "high degree of technical expertise" involved, attributing it directly to Russian state agencies. Then, on September 1, the Turnow-Preilack substation in Brandenburg was hit by rockets, an attack that Interior Minister Jan Redmann says required "significant work to set up."

The response from Berlin has been a series of diplomatic house-cleanings: shutting down the Russian consulate in Bonn and terminating the agreement with the Russian House in Berlin, which was suspected of being a spy hub. But while the government tidies up its diplomatic offices, the Russian Foreign Ministry is promising "countermeasures," and Putin is calling these moves a "serious mistake" that runs "counter to the interests of the German people."

The "not at war" framing is a luxury that only people who don't live in the target zone can afford. It’s the same kind of bureaucratic distancing I saw during the 2008 crash, when the banks were "undergoing liquidity adjustments" while my neighbors were losing their homes. When the state refuses to call an attack an attack, it isn't being "measured"—it's being cowardly. It is choosing a politically convenient path of appeasement over the hard truth that the border between "hybrid" and "conventional" war has already vanished.

The Playbook of Plausible Deniability

The most capable advocate for the Kremlin would tell you that Germany is simply fabricating evidence to fuel a "militaristic wing of Europe's elite" and line the pockets of arms makers. They would argue that the Leipzig drone is a "baseless provocation" designed to justify escalation.

But this argument collapses the moment you look at the long record. This isn't a sudden "hysteria"; it's a decades-long curriculum in destabilization. We saw the blueprint during the Estonian cyberattacks in 2007, where digital chaos was used to punish a sovereign state. We saw the "little green men" during the Annexation of Crimea in 2014, a masterclass in achieving strategic goals while maintaining plausible deniability. We saw the same covert rot during the Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, designed to shatter social cohesion from the inside.

Russia doesn't do "mistakes"; it does probes. Every drone at an airport and every rocket at a power station is a stress test. They are checking to see where the fence is weak and who in the government is too scared to call it a crime. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine wasn't a pivot; it was the inevitable conclusion of this hybrid playbook. If you think a drone in Leipzig is just a "diplomatic incident," you haven't been paying attention to the last twenty years.

The Pretext and the Price

History warns us that these "incidents" are rarely the end of the story; they are the opening act. Look at the Gleiwitz incident of 1939, where Nazi Germany staged a false flag attack on a radio station to create a casus belli for the invasion of Poland. The mechanism is the same: manufacture a crisis, test the adversary's response, and use the resulting chaos to justify a massive escalation. Whether the attack is real or staged, the goal is to move the goalposts of what is acceptable.

Right now, the AfD is trying to move those goalposts in the other direction, campaigning in Saxony-Anhalt for "normalization" with Russia. They want us to believe that if we just stop the military support for Ukraine, the drones will stop flying. That is a lie. You cannot normalize relations with a power that views your power grid as a target.

The only language this regime respects is the language of cost. The "punitive measures" currently on the table—closing a consulate and a cultural center—are like trying to stop a flood with a sponge. If Germany wants to stop being a "war target," as Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul puts it, it must stop treating this like a legal debate over the definition of "war."

The solution isn't more diplomatic summons; it's the activation of NATO Article 4 consultations and the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine to push the fight away from European soil. It means following through on the EU's plan to seize the €200 billion in frozen Russian assets to fund the defense of the vulnerable.

We are past the point of "wake-up calls." The drones are here, the rockets have landed, and the playbook is open. If the Merz government continues to prioritize the comfort of "not being at war" over the reality of being attacked, they aren't avoiding a conflict—they are just inviting the next one to happen on their own doorstep.

Berlin is cowardly to deny that Putin is attacking Germany

The Luxury of Semantic Games

The Playbook of Plausible Deniability

The Pretext and the Price

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