Aides to President Joe Biden sent a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin after they feared that the Russians may attempt to bring the war in Ukraine to the U.S., according to a New York Times report.
This summer, cargo shipments began to catch fire at German, British, and Polish airports and warehouses. Both Washington and the Europeans believed that the Russians were responsible.
In August, the White House grew concerned that the Russians were also planning to bring their sabotage to the U.S., according to secretly obtained intelligence.
The problem was simply how to get a warning to Putin, who hasn’t spoken to Biden since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In Situation Room briefings, Biden aides looked at conversations between top officials at the Russian military intelligence agency the G.R.U. outlining how shipments of consumer products caught fire, such as a small electronic massager, as a test run, according toThe New York Times.
After the Russians figured out how the packages made it past screening procedures and how long they took to ship, the plan was to send them on planes to the U.S. and Canada, where they would lead to fires after being unloaded.
The top worry was cargo planes, but passenger planes at times take smaller packages in their cargo holds if there’s space to spare.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the paper that “The risk of catastrophic error was clear, that these could catch fire in a fully loaded aircraft.”
Mayorkas put in place new screening restrictions on cargo bound for the U.S. in August. When the warnings once again arose in October, Mayorkas pushed the executives at the largest airlines flying into the U.S. to take further measures to make sure there wasn’t a disaster in the middle of a flight. Some of the measures reached the public eye, while some didn’t.
White House officials were not sure whether Putin had ordered the plot or if he even was aware. It was possible he had not been made aware, but at this point, a major effort was started to push him to put an end to it.
Similarly to when the U.S. believed Russia was considering using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine in October 2022, Biden sent National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and C.I.A. Director William Burns to warn Putin’s aides. Several avenues were required to make sure that the message reached Putin, a senior official told the paper.
The warning stipulated that if Russia’s sabotage led to a mass casualty event in the air or on the ground, the U.S. would hold Russia accountable for “enabling terrorism.” While Sullivan and Burns didn’t state what shape the response would take, they did say it would mean that the shadow war between Russia and the U.S. would reach new heights.
The shadow war is still taking place every day, with Russia apparently looking to use sabotage to break the will of NATO countries to back Ukraine but without it leading to a war with NATO itself.
It has led to a new way of life in Europe, ending the feeling of security that came after the Cold War. The search for possible acts of sabotage goes on every hour at airports, seaports, and below the surface, as well as on the streets of large European cities.
But the fires across Europe have stopped for now, with the message getting through to the Russian leader, officials told The New York Times. What remains unknown is whether Putin halted the plots or for how long they may remain on pause. Officials also told the paper that it’s possible that Russia is simply using the time to build better devices.
