Plane crash in Lithuania raises suspicions it may be linked to sabotage

2024-11-25 21:45:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said that the crash of a cargo plane in Lithuania on November 25 could have been a "hybrid incident" with foreign intervention.

"Now we have to seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident, or whether it was another hybrid incident," Baerbock told reporters at the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Italy.

"Recently we've seen a lot of hybrid attacks in Europe, often targeting individuals and infrastructure, whether underwater or on the surface," she said, referring to the recent outage of telecom cables in the Baltic Sea, which officials said that it could have been sabotage.

Lithuanian authorities have not made such a connection with the plane crash.

Many Western intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of engaging in acts of sabotage in Europe, which they say are aimed at destabilizing Ukraine's allies because it relies on Western governments in its fight against outright occupation by Russia.

The cargo plane, belonging to the DHL company, crashed while trying to land at the Vilnius airport. The plane's Spanish pilot was killed and another Spanish crew member, a German and a Lithuanian were injured, according to airport and police officials cited by Reuters.

Firefighters were unable to determine whether the plane had started to burn or break up while it was still in the air. Authorities are still looking for the black boxes that record the flight data.

Lithuanian Police Commissioner General Arunas Paulauskas said the surviving crew members told investigators there was no smoke, fire or emergency in the cabin before it crashed. He also said that the possibility of any influence from an outside force is very low.

The crash follows a series of fires at DHL warehouses in Britain and Germany over the summer.

Western security officials were quoted earlier this month as having linked the series of fires to a suspected Russian operation aimed at setting fires on cargo or passenger planes traveling to North America.

The Wall Street Journal quoted security officials as saying the devices that ignited in July at DHL warehouses in Leipzig and the British city of Birmingham were part of a test.

Last month, Polish officials said four people were arrested as a result of the investigation into packages that caught fire en route to the United States and Canada.

The activities of the four individuals "consisted of sabotage and diversion related to the shipment of packages, containing disguised explosives and hazardous materials, via aviation companies to countries in the European Union and Great Britain, which spontaneously exploded or exploded during ground transport and air," Polish prosecutors said in a statement on October 25.

Canada, in early November, expressed concern to Russian officials after the arrests were announced.

Russia responded by summoning a Canadian diplomat on November 8 to dispute allegations that Russian secret services had orchestrated the campaign to send explosive packages./REL