Nov. 5 (UPI) — Polish authorities said Tuesday that a series of parcel-borne arson attacks against logistics providers in Poland, Germany and Britain were test runs for a campaign targeting transatlantic flights from Europe to the United States and Canada.
Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency is believed to be behind the attacks as part of a coordinated campaign of hybrid attacks, according to Western security officials with Polish Prosecutor Katarzyna Calow-Jaszewska revealing four people had been arrested as of the end of October amid Europe-wide investigations.
She alleged a plot by foreign intelligence agents to ship within the European Union “camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials,” such as magnesium, in parcels that subsequently spontaneously combust or explode.
Blazes broke out in July in a container as it was being loaded onto a U.K-bound DHL aircraft at Leipzig, Germany, at a transport firm near Warsaw, Poland, and at Minworth in Britain’s midlands.
The package in the U.K. incident was said to be an “incendiary” device with The Guardian reporting that counter-terrorism police were investigating whether Russian agents were behind a device secreted in a parcel that ignited at a DHL warehouse after arriving by air from Lithuania.
“The group’s goal was also to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada,” Calow-Jaszewska said in a statement.
The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, has said it was only through good luck that the flight out of DHL’s Leipzig-Halle Airport logistics hub was delayed that the device caught fire on the ground and not mid-air.
That device, also thought to have arrived via Lithuania, was a case of “suspected Russian sabotage,” according to BfV chief Thomas Haldenwang.
The blaze at Jablonow outside Warsaw took Polish firefighters two hours to bring under control indicating it may have been a magnesium-based fire — known for being notoriously difficult to extinguish, particularly on board airborne plane.
A report in Monday’s Wall Street Journal said the package in the Leipzig incident contained electric massage devices that were booby-trapped with a highly flammable magnesium-based compound
DHL has since beefed up security around its European operations
MI5 head Ken McCallum last month said that since Britain had begun helping Ukraine repel invading Russian forces with weapons, training and financial assistance, Russian agents operating outside Russia had stepped up “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions” which they had conducted with increasing recklessness.
Russia, which is also suspected of involvement in other attacks this year on warehouses and railway networks in European Union member states Sweden in the Czech Republic, denies all responsibility.
WSJ quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the sabotage claims were typical of the type of groundless allegations the Western press leveled against Russia.
“These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media,” he said.