Anarchists Claim Responsibility for Attempted Power Outage at French Defense Facilities

Anarchists have claimed responsibility for a series of large-scale sabotage attacks on power grid facilities in France, targeting the defense industry.

They disclosed their motives in a statement published online.

On the evening of May 24, a fire broke out at a high-voltage substation in Tanneron, France, resulting in a power outage affecting 160,000 homes in the Alpes-Maritimes department, including Cannes and Nice.

The following morning, on May 25, three of the four supports of a 225 kV power line in Villeneuve-Loubet were damaged—unknown perpetrators sawed through the structural supports, causing another large-scale power outage.

Officially, no direct connection between the incidents has been established yet. However, responsibility for the damage to the power grid was claimed by a group identifying themselves as “two groups of anarchists” and a “libertarian commando,” who published a manifesto on the web platform Indymedia.

According to the authors of the statement, the main goal of the action was to disrupt the Cannes Film Festival award ceremony and target companies such as Thales Alenia Space and dozens of its subcontractors in the region due to their military involvement.

“Enough! Your nauseating speeches trying to drag us into your war preparations,” read one of the slogans from the manifesto.

Located in Cannes, the Thales Alenia Space facility is a leading European enterprise specializing in the manufacturing and integrating satellite and space systems. Its core activities encompass both civilian and defense projects.

The company produces satellites, communication systems, and control systems used in the following space programs:

• Spacebus — a series of geostationary telecommunication satellites built on the Spacebus platform.
• Sentinel-1C — radar observation satellites for the Copernicus program, utilized for Earth monitoring.
• CSO — a series of French military high-resolution optical reconnaissance satellites.
• Syracuse IV — a series of military communication satellites for the French Armed Forces, featuring secure and encrypted data transmission channels.

It is worth noting that this is not the first sabotage of such scale targeting France’s energy network in recent years. In April 2024, hackers attacked the Coulandon hydroelectric power plant, an incident that French intelligence attributes to Russian special services.

This month, French intelligence agencies released a joint 16-page report titled “Russian Threats and Actions Against France,” which revealed several episodes of cyberattacks, espionage, sabotage, and attempts by Russia to influence the country’s political processes.

In addition to the previously mentioned attack on the hydroelectric plant, the report also covered espionage activities targeting scientific institutions involved in defense technologies, including laser systems.

In 2023, attackers targeted the company KNDS France (formerly Nexter), a manufacturer of CAESAR howitzers. Official correspondence related to the supply of this equipment to Ukraine was stolen.