Packages with explosive devices have exploded at several European airports. The trail clearly leads to the Russian intelligence service GRU, which used "single-use agents". What the investigation in Germany shows.
The perpetrators and puppeteers of a series of criminal actions with explosive packages sent to a number of European airports have been identified. What the investigations have found so far.
On July 20, 2024, a package sent by DHL caught fire at Leipzig airport. A day earlier, a similar incident occurred in Warsaw, and later the same thing happened at Birmingham airport, where the ashes were initially simply thrown away. However, firefighters and security services later discovered a connection between all these cases and concluded that Europe had narrowly avoided a catastrophe, writes ARD.
Moscow denies
Just before these events, a man brought seemingly ordinary packages to Vilnius airport and showed them their contents - massage pillows, cosmetics and a sex toy. They did not arouse any suspicion, and no one found the detonators and incendiary devices. Thus began one of the most spectacular secret service operations in recent years, and investigations are still ongoing in several European countries, ARD reports.
According to investigations by the German media outlets VDR, NDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung“, European security services assume that the Russian secret service GRU is behind the cross-border operations. Ten people were probably involved in the actions. Among the suspects are high-ranking alleged GRU officers. The Russian embassy in Germany denies that Moscow is behind the cases and speaks of “paranoia“ and “conspiracy theories“.
Were there any packages with explosives to the US?
At the center of the international investigations are multiple packages: two were supposed to be sent from Lithuania to Poland, two others - from Lithuania to the UK. One of the packages to London caught fire during a stopover at Leipzig airport. And one of the two packages to Poland was seized by investigators. It is believed that these packages contained incendiary substances based on magnesium.
However, the operation is not over yet, ARD notes. Investigators are examining two more packages that a person from Warsaw sent to the US and Canada in August 2024. They did not contain incendiary substances, but rather harmless T-shirts, sneakers, and possibly a tracking device.
The Polish prosecutor's office assumes that the group wanted to investigate the route of similar shipments. Since then, European security services have been wondering whether incendiary substances should have been sent to the United States. A photo from Leipzig Airport, for example, shows how dangerous it would have been for these packages to catch fire during the flight in the baggage compartment of the plane. According to the investigation, the fact that nothing like this happened is a pure coincidence.
Recruited Ukrainians and fictitious company addresses in Britain
One of the leads leads investigators to a Ukrainian in a large East German city - his home was searched. It is believed that he had contact with a man accused of sending packages with incendiary substances from Lithuania. The Ukrainian told German reporters that he did not personally know the man in Lithuania - an acquaintance had asked him to write to the Lithuanian on Telegram that one of the packages had been lost. The Ukrainian is not among the accused.
The security services believe that Russia organized the operation through a kind of agent pyramid - for example, one of the wanted Russians is believed to have recruited a 27-year-old Ukrainian from the Polish city of Katowice. This man has already been detained.
His mother told German reporters that her son had done "nothing wrong", but investigators suspect that he was indeed part of the secret operation. The Ukrainian was supposed to travel by car from Poland to Lithuania, where he was asked to load numerous packages into his trunk and activate their detonators. He was supposed to hand them over to Lithuanian Alexander S., as the Polish newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza“ wrote.
On July 19, 2024, the Lithuanian sent two uninsured packages for 109 euros to fictitious addresses and individuals in London and Birmingham. The courier service DHL has confirmed both cases and announced enhanced security measures.
“Disposable“ agents and shadow puppeteers
Both the Ukrainian who is alleged to have planted the incendiary devices and the Lithuanian Alexander S., who is alleged to have sent the packages, were quickly arrested. The same applies to the Ukrainian Vyacheslav Ts., who is believed to have sent the test packages to the US and Canada. The men are accused of participating in sabotage actions for the Russian state, although they were probably “disposable” agents.
This is how agents who are not official collaborators of the secret services are defined. They are often recruited through platforms such as Telegram to carry out some rather innocuous task for minimal pay. It is believed that Russia has been using this method for several years, since after the start of the offensive war in Ukraine, hundreds of professional spies were forced to leave their posts in embassies. And the use of “disposable” agents allows the real perpetrators to be concealed, ARD points out.
However, investigators have also managed to reach those who probably planned the action: Russian Alexander B. was detained in late 2024 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from where he was sent to Poland. The Polish prosecutor's office accuses him of "coordinating sabotage actions", which included sending packages with incendiary substances.
According to Western intelligence services, high-ranking GRU officials were also involved in the operations - such as Colonel Denis Smolyaninov. He is under EU sanctions on charges that he recruited "agents for sabotage actions in the Community" through social media.
As ARD writes, Smolyaninov had long been looking for ways to carry out attacks on international air traffic - on behalf of Russian military intelligence. This is clear from the documents that Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky has and that have also been evaluated by the German media outlets VDR, NDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung“. They show that Moscow's secret services discussed years ago how to cause enormous damage to air traffic.
"They don't care about people's lives"
At that time, ways of disrupting communication between pilots and ground personnel or how the standard system used for landing could be disrupted were discussed. The idea was to redirect or misdirect the planes, and indeed, for some time now, more and more disruptions in communications have been noted.
At the same time, more and more security services are warning of threats to air traffic due to sabotage. "They don't care about people's lives," said Darius Jauniskis, the long-time head of the Lithuanian secret service. The head of German foreign intelligence, Bruno Kahl, agrees, noting that there are no longer any restrictions on "putting human lives at risk or deliberately putting them at risk." Finally, ARD notes that the series of packages containing incendiary devices was stopped last year. Russia was probably warned that another escalation would not be tolerated - especially on flights to North America. But Russia will have already achieved what it set out to do - to show with extremely limited means how vulnerable the West is.