Polish leader suggests Russia cooperates with plan to attack Western cargo plane

Poland's prime minister appeared on Wednesday to confirm the conclusions of Western intelligence officials who warned of a Russian plan to blow up a cargo plane over Western countries.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, “I can only confirm that Russia was planning an act of air terrorism not only against Poland, but against airlines around the world.''

Tusk did not elaborate, and it is unclear whether officials believe the Russian government continues to actively plan such actions.

Authorities first became aware of the plot in the summer, when incendiary devices placed at shipping hubs in Britain and Germany started fires that caused minimal damage. Four Western officials briefed on the operation in November said the fire was part of a test of security measures carried out by Russia's military intelligence agency, known as the GRU.

The ultimate purpose of the plan is unknown, but intelligence agencies have begun investigating whether the goal was to destroy the plane on an American or European runway, or to blow it up in midair.

By the fall, the White House was so concerned that President Biden told his National Security Adviser and CIA Director that such plots would lead to strict U.S. He ordered a warning that it could cause a reaction. Any sabotage that resulted in mass casualties would mean a serious escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Washington, and the United States would hold Russia responsible for “enabling terrorism,” a senior official told The New York Times. spoke.

The Kremlin denies that its operatives carry out subversive activities, but Western officials have warned intelligence agencies that the Kremlin is seeking ways to bring the Ukraine war, which is soon into its fourth year, to Europe and the United States. He states that he gave the order.

Many of Russia's alleged sabotage plans appear to be amateurish and perhaps intended to annoy rather than frighten. In December, Estonian authorities released details of a group of GRU operatives who were paid to smash the interior minister's car window and deface a World War II monument, and in France Russian agents broke a wall. It has been implicated in spray-painted anti-Semitic graffiti.

But other episodes are more sinister. Fires have broken out at weapons factories that supply weapons to Ukraine, as well as inside buses and shopping malls. Important communications cables across the Baltic Sea have also been cut, but it is difficult to attribute this to any specific country. Last year, two assassins believed to have ties to Russia killed a Russian defector in southern Spain.

Officials said the sabotage was carried out almost exclusively by the GRU, which has been carrying out sabotage and assassination operations in Europe since before Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Most notably, it was GRU operatives who used a very powerful nerve agent in the assassination attempt of Sergei Skripal, a GRU turncoat who lived in Britain.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the GRU's activities in Europe weakened somewhat as European countries expelled operatives and restricted the travel of Russians. But over the past year, the agency has found ways to restore operations. Officials say much of the sabotage is carried out by hired agents, sometimes recruited via the Internet. This is one reason why the operation has had limited success so far. But officials worry that recruiting people online to carry out such operations also increases the risk of dangerous and potentially fatal mistakes.

“The GRU in particular has an ongoing mission to cause mayhem on the streets of Britain and Europe,” Ken McCallum, director general of Britain's domestic intelligence agency Mi5, warned in rare public remarks last fall. . “We've seen things like arson and sabotage. Dangerous acts with increasingly reckless behavior.”