A Ukrainian man was sentenced to one year and three months in prison in Stuttgart on Tuesday for espionage, in a case prosecutors linked to a Russian parcel sabotage plot. Two other Ukrainian defendants in the same case were acquitted.
DR reports that the verdict was handed down by the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court, citing several German outlets with the news agency DPA as their source. The three men had been in pretrial detention since their arrest in May 2025.
According to the prosecution, the men sent two parcels containing GPS trackers and car parts from Cologne to Ukraine in March 2025. The orders came from a Russian intelligence service through intermediaries in Mariupol, in the Russian-occupied part of the country.
The purpose was to map the shipping route and transport times of the Ukrainian parcel service Nova Post, per the prosecution. Incendiary devices could then be sent later on the same route, to be ignited in either Germany or Ukraine. Prosecutors said the operation was intended to cause as much damage as possible and to spread fear among the population.
Other outlets and official filings
Reuters reported that the court sentenced one man and acquitted two others. It identified a third suspect in the wider case as Yevhen B., who was detained in Switzerland in May 2025 and later extradited to Germany.
The German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a January 13, 2026 statement that Daniil B. and Vladyslav T. were indicted in Stuttgart. The charges covered espionage, intelligence activity for sabotage purposes and conspiracy to commit aggravated arson. A further indictment on February 9, 2026 named Yevhen B. over the same parcel operation.
Die Zeit linked the conviction to allegations that the defendant helped prepare arson attacks on behalf of Moscow, in a case concerning sabotage of parcel transport routes. DPA, republished by Nampa, noted that the court had not yet commented in detail on the specific charges when the sentence was announced.
Reuters and DPA both reported ahead of the ruling that the Stuttgart court was scheduled to decide the case on Tuesday. The timing followed the close of proceedings that began with the arrests in May 2025 and the indictments earlier in 2026.
Earlier parcel fires in Europe
DR notes that this is not the first time Russia has been accused of such sabotage attempts. In 2024, fires broke out at DHL logistics centers in Leipzig and at sites in the United Kingdom and Poland, caused by parcels with hidden incendiary devices.
European investigators later assessed that the 2024 operation was organized through a network tied to the Russian military intelligence service GRU. The parcels were assumed to be part of an operation meant to trigger explosions aboard cargo flights to the United States.
