The accusation was as direct as it was serious: Russia is planning terror attacks against unspecified targets using airplanes, Poland's prime minister said.
"I will not go into details. I can only confirm the credibility of the fear that Russia is planning acts of air terrorism, not only against Poland, but against airlines all over the world," Donald Tusk said at a press conference on January 15.
Although shocking, the Polish leader's comments were not unexpected: there have been a growing number of suspicious, alarming and unexplained incidents in recent months.
Some of the incidents involved airlines and suspicions that Russia was seeking to place secret explosive devices on cargo planes, while others involved ships that have damaged undersea cables.
*To learn more about the suspicions of sabotage after the damage to the underwater cables, watch the video from the archive, below:
Meanwhile, in a large number of European capitals, it is abundantly clear who is to blame and what is happening: Moscow is waging a covert campaign against the West.
The seriousness of this problem was further highlighted by reports that US intelligence officials intercepted communications of Russian military intelligence officials discussing a bomb plot and that President Joe Biden had ordered two senior national security advisers to warn Russian officials.
Moscow has rejected Western accusations of terror attacks, including deliberate arson, looting, poisoning and attacks on individuals in the West.
In July of last year, a package sent from Lithuania suddenly caught fire at a DHL warehouse in the German city of Leipzig. The fire was quickly extinguished, and the damage was minimal. But this was not the only incident.
At the same time, 1,300 kilometers to the west, a similar incendiary device exploded at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham, England. It had arrived on a DHL plane.
Also, around the same time, a device at a transportation hub in Jablonow near the Polish capital, Warsaw, also exploded and caught fire. It took firefighters two hours to put it out.
These three fires, taken together, described a clear pattern – someone was deliberately planting incendiary devices on cargo planes. This alarmed law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Europe and North America.
The incendiary packages coincided with news of another incident that heightened suspicions.
In early 2024, Armin Papperger, the CEO of German industrial giant Rheinmetall, was the target of an assassination plot, according to the Financial Times, CNN, and the New York Times (NYT).
This company is among the world's largest producers of artillery and tank shells. Most importantly, since the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, the company has significantly expanded the production of shells for Ukraine.
American officials notified Germany of the plot, the NYT reported, prompting German intelligence services to provide protection and security for Papperger.
There have also been a number of incidents at sea - mainly in the Baltic Sea - in which various ships have damaged or severed undersea telecommunications and power cables.
Last month, Finnish authorities detained an oil tanker, the Eagle S, sailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Port Said, Egypt. Authorities later found that the ship had dragged its anchor behind it, damaging a cable in the Gulf of Finland.
Although the ships involved were not Russian - they sailed under "flags" from countries other than their own - officials in Finland and elsewhere have accused them of belonging to Russia's "dark fleet".
This fleet consists of ships - some unmarked, most flying foreign flags - that the Kremlin is said to have built since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as a way to evade Western sanctions. According to Ukrainian researchers, most of Russia's oil is now sold abroad through this shadowy fleet.
The "dark fleet" could also help Russia with surveillance. A report published after the Eagle S was seized found that it was equipped with "special equipment for transmitting and receiving information, which was used to monitor maritime activity."
"This year there have been 500 suspicious incidents in Europe," Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said last month before a meeting of NATO ministers.
"About 100 of them can be attributed to hybrid attacks, espionage and Russian influence operations," he added.
Earlier this month, Finnish authorities seized the Eagle S , declaring it unseaworthy. Another Chinese-owned vessel, the Yi Peng 3 , was detained and later inspected in international waters near Denmark and Sweden after it was suspected of dragging its anchor and severing two telecommunications cables. The vessel was eventually released to continue its voyage to Egypt.
In October, meanwhile, Poland's General Prosecutor's Office issued a statement about the air parcel devices, announcing that four people had been arrested "for participating in an international sabotage group" and that it was searching for two others.
"The group's goal was also to test the transfer channel for such packages, which would then be sent to the United States of America and Canada," she said.
Signs of a wider conspiracy were also mentioned by Thomas Haldenwang, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, who told lawmakers that there had been a significant increase in Russian espionage and sabotage activities in Germany.
If the Leipzig package that caught fire had started burning during the plane's flight, "this would have resulted in the plane crashing," Haldenwang told lawmakers in September.
After August, as US and European officials began working with major airline executives to implement new screening procedures for cargo flights, Biden ordered two of his top security officials - CIA Director William Burns and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan - to contact top aides to Russian leader Vladimir Putin and warn them, according to the NYT.
U.S. intelligence agencies also obtained wiretaps of conversations between senior officials of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, the NYT reported. The conversations described how the packages that were set ablaze — which included small consumer electronics items — were a test for other attempts.
In October, the head of Britain's main intelligence agency, MI5, specifically mentioned the GRU, saying they were on a "sustained mission to cause chaos on British and European streets: We have seen arson, sabotage and more. Dangerous acts carried out with great irresponsibility."
Although vague, Tusk's comments, made during a conference call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, were shocking because of their significance: the head of government made a public and explosive accusation, almost openly accusing Moscow of terrorism.
They also echoed comments from other Western officials who have said they suspect Russia is trying to wage a “dark” campaign — involving sabotage, espionage, disinformation — across Europe and North America. The goal? Destabilizing the West and undermining its support for Ukraine in its fight against ongoing Russian occupation.
For its part, Russia has repeatedly and loudly denied any involvement in the cargo plane's equipment or in the damage to the cables by the dark fleet. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called reports of an air sabotage plot an example of "a murky fabrication."/REL (A2 Televizion)
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