Germany news: Three on trial over Russia-backed spying plot

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said there was a "historic opportunity" for Armenia to forge closer ties with the EU in light of its peace deal with Azerbaijan after losing the long-contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to its neighbor in 2023.

Merz was speaking as Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan visited Berlin on Tuesday. 

"We have been paying close attention to the changes in the region," Merz told reporters. 

He said that Armenia was keen to get closer to the EU, but also that many changes would be necessary to make membership a possibility. 

Whether to pursue an association agreement was up to Yerevan, Merz said, but he said that Germany wanted to gradually intensify cooperation. 

Pashinyan meanwhile spoke of a strategic partnernship and said that his government was keen on deepening economic ties. 

Roughly 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh in the aftermath of a lengthy Azerbaijani blockade and a comparatively brief conflict in the territory in 2023.

The two rivals signed up to a peace agreement in August 2025 at a ceremony at the White House. 

Germany's BKA federal investigative police force published its data on migrant crime statistics for 2024. 

It said that of 1.967 million known criminal suspects in 2024, 172,203 were temporary migrants like asylum seekers, people granted asylum or other temporary rights to reside, or people in the country illegally. That equates to 8.8% of the total, an almost identical share to that of 2023. 

Roughly one third of the suspects, almost 697,000, were not German citizens. That larger figure includes people with longer-term or permanent residency rights. 

The remainder, 64.6%, were German nationals. 

It noted that Ukrainian temporary migrants displaced by Russia's invasion were less likely to be involved in criminal activity than migrants as a whole, with the cohort accounting for almost 36% of temporary migrants but less than 13% of the suspects.

Nationalities where the share of criminal suspects was higher than the proportion of people in Germany included citizens of Algeria, Morocco, Georgia, Tunisia, Nigeria and Albania. 

More than half of the migrant suspects were aged 30 or younger, and three-quarters were male. Roughly one third of the suspects were also thought to be involved in two or more cases.

Over-40s made up only 18% of suspects while accounting for 37.6% of migrants.

The BKA also recorded a 5% year-on-year increase in the number of temporary migrants who were the victims of crime, at just over 70,000 people.

Engineering group Voith is preparing to cut as many as 2,500 of its 22,000 jobs worldwide as part of a sweeping organisational overhaul, the company says.

Swabia-based Voith said it is reviewing its structures and workforce "as part of a strategic further development" designed to keep the company "competitive and future-proof in the long term."

The plan involves simplifying processes, speeding up decision-making and increasing investment in growth areas. The firm makes hydropower turbines, paper machines and drive systems for trains and ships.

The company did not say where the cuts will fall, noting that discussions with works councils will take place in the coming weeks. Germany will play a central role, Voith said, because structural challenges are particularly acute there — including high energy and labor costs, complex regulation and heavy bureaucracy.

Carmaker BMW will have new leadership next spring, with Milan Nedeljkovic set to take over as chief executive on 14 May, the company announced Tuesday.

The supervisory board approved the move, which will see Nedeljkovic succeed Oliver Zipse. Nedeljkovic currently serves as head of production — the same role Zipse held before becoming CEO in 2019.

Zipse will step down at the end of 13 May, the date of BMW’s annual general meeting. He turns 62 in February, above the company’s informal age limit of 60 for board members, which had already been exceeded when his contract was last extended to 2026. His tenure included launching the Neue Klasse, the core platform for BMW’s future electric strategy.

A 40-minute police chase ended in dramatic fashion when a fleeing driver crashed straight into a Christmas tree plantation in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Police said nearly 20 patrol cars joined the pursuit on Monday evening after officers spotted a vehicle with stolen licence plates. When they tried to stop the 28-year-old driver and his two passengers at a red light, the driver sped off.

The chase swept across several highways and federal roads before the car left a rural stretch about 20 kilometres from the starting point, smashed through a fence, skidded down an embankment and came to a stop among rows of fir trees at a Christmas tree farm near the town of Bad Honnef.

As the driver tried to accelerate away again, an officer fired at one of the tyres. Another officer suffered cuts while breaking a side window. The driver and his two passengers, aged 21 and 28, were arrested at the scene.

Police said the driver showed signs of alcohol use and was given a blood test. He is under investigation on suspicion of endangering road traffic, fleeing the scene of a crash and suspected theft.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday the new US National Security Strategy unveiled last week contained parts that were  "unacceptable to us from a European perspective."

Merz also said Europe needs to become less dependent on the United States, responding directly to Washington's strategic shift.

Read more about the story here.

Three men are standing trial in Germany on charges of tracking a former Ukrainian soldier on behalf of Russian intelligence in what prosecutors say may have been preparation for an assassination.

Prosecutors allege that the ringleader, an Armenian identified as Vardges I., recruited a Ukrainian, Robert A., and a Russian, Arman S., to help lure the former soldier to a Frankfurt cafe last year. The alleged target became suspicious and alerted police.

Prosecutors said the operation "presumably served to prepare further intelligence missions in Germany, possibly including the killing of the target."

German media reported that the former Ukrainian soldier believed he was on a Russian "death list" after Moscow accused him of war crimes, including the execution of Russian troops.

When the intended target failed to appear at the police-surveilled cafe, the three men drove off but were stopped and arrested by police commandos. According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, officers found cash, multiple passports — both genuine and forged — and GPS tracking devices in their vehicle. All three suspects remain in custody.

The trial of the suspected online offender known as "White Tiger" will begin on 9 January, after the Hamburg regional court admitted the indictment against the 21-year-old.

Prosecutors accuse the defendant of murder and five counts of attempted murder. He is alleged to have coerced vulnerable teenagers online into harming themselves; in one case, a 13-year-old is believed to have died by suicide.

In total, prosecutors list 204 offences said to have been committed when the accused was a minor or young adult, involving more than 30 child and teenage victims. 

To fulfil the accused's request for more graphic content, the children were said to have been manipulated to seriously injure themselves in live group chats or carry out sexual acts on themselves. 

The alleged offenses took place between January 2021 and September 2023. In one case, prosecutors say the suspect influenced a 13-year-old through another minor until the boy took his own life during a livestream. Additional cases involve attempted suicides.

In early October, investigators arrested another suspect in Baden-Württemberg. The 16-year-old is accused of belonging to a splinter group of the online network "764," which police say sought to manipulate victims psychologically and pressure them into harming themselves.

The youth chamber has scheduled 82 non-public hearings through the end of 2026.

Editor's note: If you are suffering from emotional strain or suicidal thoughts, seek professional help. You can find information on where to find help, no matter where you live in the world, at this website: www.befrienders.org

Guten Tag from DW's newsroom in Bonn, just a couple of blocks away from a freshly reopened and revamped House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany (Haus der Geschichte). Trust us, it's well worth a visit (and it's free!).

Danke schön for joining us as three men go on trial in Germany, accused of tracking a former Ukrainian soldier on behalf of Russian intelligence.

Prosecutors say it may have been in preparation for an assassination.

They claim that an Armenian man recruited a Ukrainian and a Russian accomplice to lure the target to a Frankfurt cafe.  

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