A DHL cargo plane crashed on approach to an airport in Lithuania’s capital and skidded into a house on Monday morning, killing a Spanish crew member but not harming anyone on the ground. The cause of the accident is under investigation.
A surveillance video showed the plane descending normally as it approached the airport before sunrise, and then exploding into a huge ball of fire behind a building. The moment of impact could not be seen in the video.
The crash took place at a time when Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence is carrying out sabotage against their nations in retaliation for their support for Ukraine – including arson attacks, disinformation and by putting incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes. In July, one caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another ignited in a warehouse in England.
Lithuanian officials acknowledged that one line of inquiry will be whether Russia played a role, given its suspected involvement in other cases of sabotage – although they stressed that there is no evidence pointing to that yet.
“Without a doubt, we cannot rule out the terrorism version,” said Darius Jauniškis, chief of Lithuanian intelligence.
“We see Russia becoming more aggressive,” he said. “But for now, we really cannot make any attributions or point fingers at anyone, because there is no information about it.”
Speaking to reporters at a G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Italy, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said: “We must now seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident or whether it was another hybrid incident,” alluding to the recent severing of telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea that officials have said could have been sabotage.
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