Overview

• Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned in the Bundestag that Russia is sabotaging, spying and murdering to unsettle Western societies.
• A three‑part SPIEGEL podcast describes how Russian services use low‑paid “Wegwerfagenten,” often recruited online, for one‑off operations.
• Investigators tied near‑disastrous incendiary packages at Leipzig airport and a UK airport in July 2024 to senders in Lithuania, with several suspects later arrested there.
• The series revisits the 2011 GSG‑9 raid that exposed long‑term “illegal” agents Heidrun and Andreas Anschlag to contrast deep‑cover networks with newer disposable operatives.
• Separately, manager magazin reports that owner Matthias Ottmann is pushing to split Munich’s Südhausbau, which controls about 5,700 apartments.