A Lithuanian presidential adviser alleged that Russia is behind a series of explosive parcels sent to European countries.
A mysterious wave of sabotage earlier this year in courier depots in Britain, Germany, and Poland, which had the potential to cause an explosion on an aircraft, was allegedly the work of Russia, said Kestutis Budrys, a national security adviser to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda.
“I can state that this is part of unconventional kinetic operations against NATO countries that are being undertaken by the Russian military intelligence,” Budrys told Reuters on Nov. 5.
“We note that these operations are being escalated: their focus is moving ... to harming infrastructure and actions that could end up killing people.”
The Epoch Times contacted the Russian government for comment.
Budrys told Ziniu radio on Tuesday “We are telling our allies that it’s not random, it’s part of military operations.”
“We need to neutralize and stop it at the source, and the source is Russia’s military intelligence,” he said.
Lithuanian Prosecutor General Nida Grunskiene told reporters in Vilnius that authorities were investigating the parcels and arrests had been made in “Lithuania and elsewhere.”
“Our investigation is ongoing quite intensely, in cooperation with institutions in other countries,” she said. “And at this moment we have people under arrest, but I will not say the number to avoid harm to the investigation.”
Reuters reported that Budrys’s comments were the first time a Lithuanian official has accused Russian military intelligence of a specific act of sabotage.
Polish authorities said in October that it had detained four people in an investigation into explosive parcels being sent by courier to EU countries and Britain as part of a plot that ultimately aimed to send such packages to the United States and Canada.
They said it was foreign intelligence services without specifically naming Russia.
In a statement on Oct. 25, Polish Prosecutor Katarzyna Calow-Jaszewska said “The group’s activities consisted of sabotage and diversion related to sending parcels containing camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials via courier companies to European Union countries and Great Britain, which spontaneously ignited or detonated during land and air transport.
Fires
In October, German authorities said they were investigating several fires caused by incendiary devices hidden inside parcels at a warehouse in Leipzig earlier this year.German authorities warned businesses in August that dangerous parcels might be in circulation after several incidents in which freight sent by private individuals in a number of European countries caught fire while in transit.
At the time, Thomas Haldenwang, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, told a parliamentary committee that Germany had only narrowly escaped a plane crash when an air freight parcel caught fire.
According to a letter German authorities sent to businesses in August, the packages contained electronic consumer devices and containers with liquids, which they claimed were likely prepared with the intention to damage logistics infrastructure.
British counter-terrorism police are also investigating whether Russian spies planted a bomb in a parcel that caught fire on July 22 at the DHL warehouse in Minworth, near Birmingham.
Britain’s Security Service (MI5) Director General Ken McCallum said in October that Russia’s GRU military intelligence service was trying to cause “mayhem” across Britain and Europe.
“The GRU in particular is on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more,” he said, declining to give further details.
The Russian Embassy in London said it emphatically rejected the “unsubstantiated allegations.”
