Russia behind plot to plant bombs on cargo planes, Western official says
Russia was responsible for sending two incendiary devices to DHL logistics hubs in Germany and the United Kingdom in July, as part of a wider sabotage campaign to possibly start fires aboard aircraft bound for North America, a Western security official told NBC News.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the suspected plot.
Polish authorities have arrested four people and are searching for two more in connection to the case, according to government officials and Polish media.
DHL said in an email that it is “aware of two recent incidents involving shipments in our network” and cooperating with investigators.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said it has bolstered air cargo screening over the past several months.
A U.S. official said federal authorities remain vigilant against threats to aviation and air cargo systems but added: “At this time, there is no current active threat targeting U.S.-bound flights.”
The White House National Security Council and the CIA declined to comment.
German and British authorities previously said they were investigating suspected Russian sabotage in two incidents in July. A package en route to an aircraft exploded at a DHL logistics center in Leipzig before a scheduled flight. And also in July, a package burst into flames at a DHL center in Birmingham, England.
The packages contained electric massagers that contained a magnesium-based flammable substance, the Western official said.
Poland’s national prosecutor’s office said the saboteurs’ goal was “to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada.”
Last month, Thomas Haldenwang, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, told German lawmakers that it was sheer luck that one of the booby-trapped packages set off a fire on the ground.
“Here it was just a lucky coincidence that the package caught fire on the ground and not during the flight of the plane,” Haldenwang said, calling the incident “a particularly great danger. “
U.K. counterterrorism police investigating the incident declined to comment on the DHL cases.
In recent months, U.S., British, German and other European officials have accused Russia of organizing an increasingly aggressive sabotage campaign aimed at undermining and disrupting Western assistance to Ukraine.
The attempted sabotage has included a plot to bomb or set fire to military bases in Germany, attempts to hack and disrupt Europe’s railway signal network and the jamming of GPS systems for civil aviation, according to European and British authorities. The physical sabotage efforts have coincided with a concerted disinformation campaign by Moscow to weaken political support for Kyiv in the West, officials say.
The director of the U.K.’s MI5 domestic intelligence agency, Ken McCallum, said on Oct. 8 that Russia has turned to private intelligence operatives and criminals to do “their dirty work.”
Russia’s GRU military intelligence service “in particular is on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more. Dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness,” McCallum said.
Russia has repeatedly rejected allegations from Western countries that it is orchestrating a sabotage campaign in Europe.
