An internal email from the Berlin Green Party parliamentary group has revealed a deliberate communication strategy following the sabotage attack on the city’s power grid by far-left activists, instructing lawmakers not to focus on the perpetrators and instead to direct public criticism toward Governing CDU Mayor Kai Wegner.
According to Bild, which obtained the document and said its authenticity was confirmed by the parliamentary group, the email sets out a “communication line” on the issue of the power outage and Wegner’s handling of the crisis.
The message states that the Greens have “a strategic interest in ensuring that the debate surrounding Kai Wegner receives prolonged media coverage and remains a leadership/competence issue for the Governing Mayor,” framing the core message as: “Kai Wegner is incapable of handling a crisis.”
The instruction comes after an attack on Jan. 3, when far-left perpetrators set fire to power cables on a bridge in southwest Berlin, cutting electricity to around 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses. For days, families, elderly residents, and people requiring care were forced to rely on emergency shelters as temperatures dropped. Several letters claiming responsibility later appeared online from the extremist Vulkangruppe (Volcano Group).
One directive in the Greens’ internal email stands out. It tells party members: “DO NOT focus on perpetrators/investigations.” According to Focus, this guidance was circulated to all Green MPs in the Berlin House of Representatives.
The same email also instructs that criticism should be aimed at “CDU/Wegner as the politically responsible party for leadership and crisis management,” explicitly adding “NOT SPD Giffey/Spranger,” despite the fact that Interior Senator Iris Spranger and Economics Senator Franziska Giffey also hold key responsibilities in managing such crises.
Elections to the Berlin House of Representatives are scheduled for September.
🇩🇪 In this video, a cancer patient living through the Berlin blackout says he is sleeping in the hallway of his apartment complex because it’s the warmest part of the building.
His neighbors say the refugee center next door was evacuated days ago. pic.twitter.com/zDUojgnf0Y
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) January 6, 2026In response, the Berlin Greens parliamentary group issued a statement saying, “We condemn this suspected left-wing extremist attack. The perpetrators must be brought to justice and convicted as quickly as possible. That has always been clear to us. We want to focus on how we can better protect our city in the future.”
Wegner has faced criticism over his personal conduct on the day of the attack, after it emerged that he played tennis for about an hour and only acknowledged this publicly several days later.
Security authorities have linked the attack to the Vulkangruppe, which has claimed responsibility in online statements. In one declaration published under the headline “Shutting down fossil power plants is manual work. Courage only. Militant New Year’s greetings,” the group framed the sabotage as an act of political resistance against fossil energy. “Last night, we successfully sabotaged the gas-fired power plant in Berlin-Lichterfelde,” the statement read, adding: “Power outages were not the goal of the action, but rather the fossil energy industry.”
According to Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, groups using the “volcano” label have been active mainly in Berlin and Brandenburg since 2011 and have repeatedly carried out arson attacks on critical infrastructure, causing power and telecommunications outages and disruptions to public transport. The Berlin state office classifies the groups as part of the wider spectrum of left-wing extremism alongside Antifa.
In the aftermath of the blackout, authorities have deployed hundreds of police officers to guard power infrastructure across the city. Tagesspiegel reported that about 300 officers are patrolling southwest Berlin, with others assigned to protect cable bridges and power poles, some in plainclothes, for an indefinite period.
Police unions have criticized the move. Stephan Weh, state chief of the GdP police union, said, “The fact that our colleagues now have to push completely pointless guard duty and object protection at cable ducts is a disgrace. There are private security services that the responsible companies could hire.”
