Conflicts

Close to a residential complex near the airport of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, a Boeing 757 crashed at about 5:30 a.m. Monday morning. Here and there people are already looking toward Russia since evidence surfaced not long ago that Russia was conducting tests by sending explosive packages to Europe.

Terrorist attack?
The cargo plane crashed right next to a two-story building. The 12 residents were able to be evacuated in time. The plane caught fire. There were four people on board the DHL plane: two pilots and two crew members. One of the pilots died; the three others were taken to the hospital injured.
The cargo plane reportedly came from Leipzig. What exactly happened is not yet clear but it would have been an accident. So said Vilmantas Vitkauskas, the head of the National Crisis Management Center. However, Police Commissioner General Arūnas Paulauskas stressed at a press conference that other avenues were still open, including an act of terrorism. He claimed that “that should not be ruled out yet.” “That is one of the avenues we are investigating,” he read. “I think that the inspection of the crime scene and the collection of evidence could take all week. Answers will not come soon.”

Russian sabotage?
In late August, German security services warned of the shipment of “unconventional incendiary bombs” by unknown persons via cargo transport. Indeed, in July, a package from the Baltic states allegedly contained an incendiary device caught fire in Leipzig. Moscow has for some time been accused of organizing the shipment of incendiary bombs aboard cargo and passenger aircraft with ultimate destination the United States and Canada. Firebombs were already hidden in DHL packages in Germany and the United Kingdom (Europe). And according to European security experts, Russian military intelligence (or GRU) was then behind the package bombs. “It seems that the purpose of this operation was to 'test the transfer channel for these packages, which would eventually be sent to the United States and Canada.” So said Pawel Szota, head of Poland's foreign intelligence service at the time. He pointed out then that if the packages exploded, the result could be the death of a large number of people. The international investigation revealed that the individuals who sent the flammable packages were also sending nonflammable goods to the U.S. and Canada, in what then appeared to be a test run for further acts of terror....

But officially, therefore, the plane crash in Lithuania could not yet be linked to malicious intent. For now, it looks like a fatal accident.

(FVDV for Tagtik/Source: Reuters - Delfi - LRT/Illustration picture: Photo by Jan Rosolino on Unsplash)