The Russians were preparing new sabotage against the United States — they planned to send explosives by plane that would cause fires as soon as they were unloaded. In response, the United States threatened Russian leader Vladimir Putin with responsibility for supporting terrorism.
This is reported by The New York Times, citing sources.
It all started when seemingly innocent cargo began to catch fire at airports and warehouses in Germany, the UK, and Poland in the summer. The US and Europe were convinced that Russia was behind the sabotage.
In August, White House officials became increasingly concerned about secretly obtained intelligence that suggested Moscow was preparing a much larger plan: to bring the war in Ukraine to American shores.
In a series of briefings in the Situation Room, top aides to the US President Joe Biden analyzed details of conversations between senior officials of GRU, who described shipments of consumer goods that had caught fire — in one case, a small electric massager as a test run.
Once the Russians understood how packages passed through air cargo screening systems and how long it took to transport them, the next step was to send them on planes bound for the US and Canada, where they could have caused a fire once unloaded.
While cargo planes are the main concern, sometimes passenger planes take smaller packages to fill the available space in their cargo holds.
“The risk of a catastrophic failure was obvious, because they could catch fire in a fully loaded plane,” the US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a recent interview.
In August, Mayorkas imposed new restrictions on the screening of cargo entering the United States. In October, when the warnings resurfaced, he quietly pressured the top executives of the largest airlines flying to the United States to accelerate their efforts to prevent a midair disaster. Some of these precautions were announced to the public at the time, others were not.
But behind the scenes, White House officials struggled to understand whether Putin had given the order and was aware of the plot, or whether he was being kept in the dark. Several officials said the sabotage may have been the work of the GRU officers carrying out a general order to increase pressure on the United States and its NATO allies.
According to the sources, Biden instructed his national security adviser Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns to send a series of warnings to Putin’s top aides. The gist of the warning was that if the sabotage resulted in mass casualties in the air or on the ground, the United States would hold Russia responsible for “facilitating terrorism”. Sullivan and Burns did not specify what that response would be, but they made it clear that it would take the shadow war between Washington and Moscow to a new level.
In particular, Sullivan held a series of calls with his Russian counterpart Yuri Ushakov. The first conversation was about the Russian Federationʼs involvement in the preparation of an assassination attempt on Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger.
Sullivan then told Ushakov that the administration believed Russia was also responsible for the incendiary devices and that the Russians had put civilians at risk. He said the biggest concern was the risk of mass casualties if the packages had exploded on a cargo or passenger plane.
The warnings eventually reached Putin, the NYT sources say. They also had their effect: the fires in Europe have stopped, at least for now. But it is unclear whether Putin ordered the stop and for how long. It is possible that Russia is using this time to create better and more stealthy devices.
- Arson attacks committed in favor of Russia have intensified in Europe over the summer. For example, a commercial facility linked to Ukraine was set on fire in Britain.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.