Russia was preparing for sabotage operations against the US by placing explosive devices in cargo shipments and sending them by plane.
In response, the US warned Russian President Vladimir Putin of consequences for “supporting terrorism”, he reported The New York Times citing unnamed sources.
In December, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated that Russia has been waging not a covert, but an open war against NATO countries for a long time. Rutte’s claims followed an OSCE report which revealed that Russia had carried out approximately 150 attacks on NATO countries since the start of the war in Ukraine. These attacks include cyberattacks on railways, hospitals, GPS systems and water networks. The report also highlights hacking, sabotage and threats to military facilities and underwater infrastructure.
The origins of the operation with incendiary devices date back to the summer when seemingly innocuous cargo shipments began to be set on fire at airports and warehouses in Germany, Great Britain and Poland. The USA and Europe were convinced that Russia was behind those incidents.
By August, according to the New York Times, White House officials had grown increasingly concerned about intelligence reports suggesting that Moscow was planning a much broader operation — transferring the war from Ukraine to American soil.
During a series of meetings in the Crisis Room, senior advisers to President Joe Biden analyzed intercepted communications between senior officers of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service. Those discussions described shipments of consumer goods that caught fire, including a small electric massager that was used as a test device.
After the Russians figured out how the packages move through air cargo security systems and how long the transit takes, the next step was to send those items on flights to the US and Canada with the goal of causing fires after the packages were unloaded.
Cargo planes were the primary concern, although passenger flights also sometimes carry smaller packages in the hold.
In August, U.S. Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas introduced stricter screening measures for cargo shipments entering the U.S., according to the New York Times. By October, after repeated warnings, he pressed the chief executives of the major airlines to speed up measures to prevent in-flight disasters. Some of these security measures were made public, while others remained secret.
Behind closed doors, White House officials tried to determine whether Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered the sabotage plan or was uninformed. Several officials have suggested that the sabotage actions may have been the work of GRU officers acting under a general directive to increase pressure on the US and its NATO allies.
According to New York Times sources, the warnings were eventually delivered to Putin and appear to have had an effect. The fires in Europe have stopped, at least for now. However, it remains unclear whether Putin personally ordered the suspension of operations and how long the lull will last. There is a possibility that Russia used this lull to develop more advanced devices that will be more difficult to detect in future sabotage attacks, concludes the American media.
(Vijesti.ba)
