German police arrest Russian man in connection with the fatal stabbings of 2 Ukrainian men

Two Ukrainian men were stabbed to death in southern Germany, police said on Sunday, and a Russian man was arrested by authorities as a possible suspect in the killings.

The two Ukrainians, who were 23 and 36 years old and lived in the southern German county of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, were killed on the premises of a shopping centre in the village of Murnau in Upper Bavaria. Soon after the killings on Saturday evening, the police arrested a 57-year-old Russian on suspicion of murder, German news agency dpa reported.

The names of the victims and the suspect were not released in line with German privacy rules. The possible motive for the killings was not yet known, authorities said. It also was not clear if the three men knew each other.

More than 1 million Ukrainian refugees have fled to Germany since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Germany is also home to a significant Russian immigrant community and 2.5 million Russians of German ancestry who mostly moved to the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.