German police launch raids in probe into 2025 Berlin blackout

Police officers seal off an anarchist library during raids in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district targeting the alleged masterminds behind an attack on Berlin’s power supply last September in the southeastern part of the city, Mar. 24, 2026. (Reuters)

• An unnamed “group of anarchists” claimed responsibility for the outage in a post on the far-left Indymedia online platform
• The fire took down two high-voltage cables and knocked out electricity to nearly 50,000 customers

BERLIN: Police staged raids across Germany on Tuesday as part of a probe into an arson attack last year that knocked out high-voltage power lines and caused a partial blackout in Berlin.
An unnamed “group of anarchists” claimed responsibility for the outage in a post on the far-left Indymedia online platform, saying they intended to “turn off the energy for the military industrial complex” at a nearby technology park.
The fire took down two high-voltage cables and knocked out electricity to nearly 50,000 customers in Berlin’s southeastern Treptow-Koepenick district, according to local grid operator Stromnetz Berlin.
A separate arson attack in southwestern Berlin in early January destroyed a key electricity transmission line and caused a major blackout that lasted for days at a time of freezing temperatures.
A left-wing militant group, Vulkangruppe (Volcano Group), claimed responsibility for that outage, which affected Berlin’s Steglitz-Zehlendorf district.
Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, said that Tuesday’s raids showed that “the investigative pressure on the far-left perpetrators” of both attacks “has been significantly stepped up.”
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that authorities “have been monitoring the far-left extremist scene very closely” since both the Berlin blackouts and “are taking consistent action against far-left extremist activities at all levels.”
Tuesday morning’s raids focused on the September 2025 blackout and four named suspects — aged 28, 31, 35 and 36 — in a joint statement from Berlin’s police and prosecutors.
A total of 18 locations were searched in Berlin, Hamburg, Duesseldorf and the eastern town of Kyritz, the statement said.
Mobile phones and laptops were among the items seized by police.
Although both Berlin blackouts have been blamed on far-left activists, German authorities have in the past also pointed to Russia as being behind surveillance and sabotage activities targeting its infrastructure.
German authorities launched a “terrorism” investigation into the January attack.
They have yet to identify any members of the Vulkangruppe, which has also claimed responsibility for a number of other arson attacks in recent years, or determine conclusively that the group actually exists.