Throughout most of the Ukraine-Russia war, Western officials have suspected Moscow is waging an expanding sabotage campaign targeting arms and defense tech manufacturing facilities in Europe. This has included mysterious alleged arson attacks, for example including the charge that Russia was behind a huge blaze which destroyed a metal factory belonging to defense manufacturer Diehl in Berlin last summer.
But on Monday, curiously one day before the US presidential election, Western security officials have made new bombshell allegations of a Russian plot aimed at bringing down cargo and passenger planes leaving Europe.
Few details have been given on precisely how European security officials were able to quickly link it to "Russian intelligence" - but arrests have been made.
"Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices, shipped via DHL, were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the U.S. and Canada, as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies," The Wall Street Journal writes.
The Monday report says that during two incidents in July, electronic devices inside packages actually ignited. This occurred at two separate DHL logistics hubs—in Leipzig, Germany in Birmingham, England.
Poland has arrested four suspects and charged them with terrorism-related crimes, and its National Prosecutor’s Office has alleged the individuals were working on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency.
"The group’s goal was also to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada," the Polish prosecutor’s office said.
But the head of Poland’s foreign-intelligence agency, Pawel Szota, went further and strongly insinuated Russia is involved in the plot, and specifically the military-intelligence agency GRU. "I’m not sure the political leaders of Russia are aware of the consequences if one of these packages exploded, causing a mass casualty event," the provocative statement by Szota said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has countered by saying, "We have never heard any official accusations" of Russian involvement. He followed with: "These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media." WSJ further details the following of the alleged plot:
Now investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot, according to security officials and people familiar with the probe.
Security officials say the electric massagers, sent to the U.K. from Lithuania, appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America.
But without much in the way of further details released to the public, some serious questions remain...
Given that sometimes electronic devices have been known to malfunction, possibly causing fires—especially devices made with lithium-ion batteries—are investigators certain this wasn't the result of an accident?
Below: the Executive Director of the hawkish think tank McCain Institute, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia - has said this warrants deeper NATO involvement in supporting Ukraine.
Are authorities assuming the suspects are being run by Russian intelligence due merely to the geopolitical context of the Ukraine war, or have they been able to establish definitive links between the suspects the GRU (or other Russian agencies)? Past cases related to sabotage allegations involving Russian intelligence have proven flimsy at times.
And then there's the question of motive: never has Russia before been shown to conduct terror tactics focused on bombing and bringing down large civilian airplanes... why would Moscow want to do this now?
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