Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday accused Russia of planning a major terrorist campaign against aircraft.
“I can only confirm that Russia planned acts of air terror, not just against Poland but against airlines across the globe,” said Tusk during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The New York Times reported in recent days that U.S. intelligence warned the White House that Russia was planning to smuggle incendiary devices onto cargo planes heading to the U.S. The White House, according to the Times, warned Kremlin to stop the operation.
Tusk did not immediately elaborate on his remark about Russian terror attacks on aircraft.
Moscow has been previously accused of sabotaging European transport infrastructure and jamming GPS signals by several countries as part of a campaign of hybrid warfare by Russian leader Vladimir Putin against the continent.
In April 2024, Czech Transport Minister Martin Kupka warned that Russia has conducted “thousands of attempts” to attack European railways since the beginning of the Moscow’s full-scale war in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the accusation “baseless.”
Most recently, Russia was accused of shooting down an Azerbaijani passenger jet that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people. The incident echoed the downing of the MH17 plane in 2014 over eastern Ukraine in territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists, which killed 298 people.
While Putin apologized without shouldering the blame for the Azerbaijani crash, Russia has never accepted responsibility for the MH17 disaster.
This story is being updated.
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