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Politico (3 May 2026)

Alexander DINGER, Lennart PFAHLER and Philipp WOLDIN

It was 6 a.m. when Andreas Thomsen realized something was wrong. The lights in his Berlin home refused to turn on. The appliances did not hum. The electric shutters stayed stubbornly shut. The only sound in the house was the steady pumping of his breathing machine.

Thomsen reached for his smartphone. Nothing. No warning. No breaking news alert. He’s 68 years old and suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He cannot survive without his ventilator. It was now running on battery power. He had six hours left.

Only around 8 a.m. did Thomsen learn what had happened: an attack on the city’s electricity supply. Hundreds of thousands of Berliners in the city’s southwest had been left without power. He alerted his caregivers and called the fire department.

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