DHL plane crash: German leaders raise questions about sabotage

CNN
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German leaders raised the possibility that a fiery cargo plane crash in Lithuania on Monday was the result of sabotage or hybrid warfare.

The cargo plane was flying from Leipzig, Germany, and was due to land at Vilnius Airport when it crashed a few kilometers from the runway. The plane slid on the ground for several hundred meters before it hit a residential building, authorities in Lithuania say.

Asked on Monday evening whether the crash was the result of hybrid warfare, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told public broadcaster ZDF: “We are looking into this, we can’t say at the moment, but it could be – there are a lot of bad forms for hybrid warfare as we see in Germany.”

Scholz said the cause of the crash “must be thoroughly investigated. But we won’t press charges until we can prove it.”

His comments follow similar remarks by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who, according to Reuters, told reporters at a G7 summit: “The fact that we, together with our Lithuanian and Spanish partners, now have to seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident (or) a second hybrid event shows what volatile times we live in at the moment, even in the center of Europe.”

On Tuesday, Baerbock added that several recent incidents fit Russia’s pattern of “destabilization and division,” noting that “thousands of propaganda robots, disrupted GPS signals, or even a data cable in the Baltic Sea being severed — these cannot all be coincidences same time.”

Meanwhile, Lithuanian authorities downplayed the prospect of nefarious activity, insisting that no evidence pointing to sabotage had yet been uncovered. “Our initial information does not indicate that we need to investigate more serious acts,” prosecutor Arturas Urbelis said in a statement on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

“We may find signs of activities of a different nature as we investigate,” he added.

The US National Transportation Safety Board is sending its own staff to help with the investigation, Reuters reported, along with representatives from Boeing and the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Footage from a nearby surveillance camera shows the plane plummeting before diving out of sight behind a building. Moments later, a large fireball can be seen in the sky rising behind the building, followed by a plume of black smoke.

One crew member died in the crash. Three others on board the plane, including the pilot, survived, along with 12 people in the house, who were safely evacuated, according to local authorities.

Lithuania’s counterintelligence chief Darius Jauniskis told reporters at a news conference: “We cannot rule out the possibility of terrorism. … But at the moment we cannot attribute or point fingers because we do not have such information.”

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that incendiary devices ignited in Leipzig, Germany and Britain in July were part of a covert Russian operation aimed at starting fires aboard cargo and passenger planes bound for the United States and Canada. Some European officials later supported these claims, which Moscow denied.

“I can ascertain that this is part of unconventional kinetic operations against NATO countries being carried out by Russian military intelligence,” Kestutis Budrys, a national security adviser to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, told Reuters after the WSJ report.

“We notice that these operations are escalating: their focus is moving … to damage infrastructure and actions that can end up killing people,” Budrys said.

At a press conference, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the WSJ’s reporting “incomprehensible hoaxes that are never supported by any credible information.”

The cargo plane that crashed Monday was a Swiftair plane “operating under contract for DHL,” the logistics company said in a statement to CNN.

DHL said the plane “made an emergency landing about one kilometer from VNO Airport.” It confirmed that four people were on board. “The cause of the accident is still unknown and an investigation is underway,” DHL said.

The plane was a Boeing 737-400, according to a statement from Swiftair.

According to Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas, the plane narrowly missed hitting the house directly and instead crashed into the nearby courtyard, LRT reported.

The head of the Lithuanian police, Arūnas Paulauskas, said the incident was “most likely due to a technical error or a human error,” but that terrorism “cannot be ruled out,” according to LRT.

This story has been updated with further developments.