The attack on South Berlin’s power grid on January 3rd raises many questions. To answer this, the Committee for the Protection of the Constitution met in the House of Representatives on Monday afternoon. Two requests were discussed. One comes from the CDU and SPD and asks about the “level of knowledge of the perpetrator milieu”. The other is a Green Party question about the “threat situation for Berlin’s critical infrastructures from attacks and sabotage actions from at home and abroad”.
The public’s need for new knowledge, facts and evidence is high. But reliable information remains rare. The answers that the spokesman for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution gave to the committee largely correspond to the previously known approaches in the media.
According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the saboteurs of the Zehlendorf power grid were “left-wing eco-anarchists who propagate violence with their actions.” These “make capitalism responsible for global crises and climate catastrophes” as well as “the supposed resurgence of fascism.” They go public with letters of confession and describe themselves as volcano groups – the Office for the Protection of the Constitution deliberately refers to them “in the plural”.
In a letter from a “volcano group”, the senders first commented on this on January 4, 2026 Arson attack on the power grid known in Berlin. On January 6th, another letter from a “volcano group” was published. In one so-called correction They claimed the attack once again after speculation as to whether the attack was an act of sabotage by Russia. In a third, letter published on January 7th Other authors presumably claimed that they were the original “volcano group” and had nothing to do with the attacks of recent years. That same evening a letter appearswhich claims to have carried out “targeted cuts and fires on the cable bridges”.
In a fifth published on January 8th Write A “volcano group” regrets that in addition to the gas power plant, private households were also affected, as this was not intended. With today’s knowledge of the effects, the group would have moved the attack to a warm time of year, it says. A letter follows on January 11thwhich rejects that of the self-proclaimed original volcano group as a “fake” and claims the 2011 act as its own. The last letter so far will be released on January 12th. With the most detailed description of the crime to date, it claims the attack in Lichterfelde as its own.
Under this name, various actors have been repeatedly sabotaging power, rail and telecommunications networks using “kinetic means”, i.e. fire, for around fifteen years. The speaker explains the lack of success in the investigations lasting several years by the “high level of professionalism and clandestineness” that the groups display. He adds: “Fire rarely leaves traces.”
The lack of information confounds the politicians present. They repeatedly fire volleys of questions around the room: What are the communication channels of the volcano groups? What other groups are you in contact with? How do they recruit new members? Are there any insights into their socio-economic background? Left-wing politician Niklas Schrader comments: “You can accuse the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of a lot, but not that it neglects left-wing extremism.”
Special organization for special evaluation
The spokesman “doesn’t want to say anything about it at first” and emphasizes that most of these questions are “relevant to the investigation”. It is therefore in the interest of the general public to continue to leave these unanswered so that the investigation “can continue as calmly, as well and as prudently as possible.” Since the investigation is now in the hands of the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Prosecutor General must decide how he wants to inform the public. In contrast, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced that it had now formed a “special organization” for a special evaluation in this matter.
From the last letter from a volcano group dated January 12th, one can already see their reaction to the investigation: “Let the cops examine 100 investigation approaches. While they read, we say.”