Russia-Ukraine War
Russia-Ukraine War
Russia-Ukraine War
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Last year, the White House rushed to deliver a message to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin after U. S. intelligence agencies said a Russian military unit was preparing to send explosive packages to shipping planes.
By David E. Sanger
David E. Sanger has covered five U. S. presidents for the Times and has written extensively about the resumption of the superpower between the United States, Russia and China.
After probably innocent shipments began catching fire at airports and warehouses in Germany, Britain and Poland over the summer, there was no doubt in Washington and Europe that Russia was the sabotage.
But in August, White House officials were alarmed by secretly received intelligence suggesting Moscow had a much broader plan in mind: bringing the war in Ukraine to American shores.
The question is how to send a warning to the only one who could prevent it: Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
In a series of briefings in the Situation Room, President Biden’s top advisers reviewed the main points of conversations between senior officials of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, who described the shipments of consumer products that were They set fire (in one case, a small electronic massager) as a test.
Once the Russians discovered how packages were delivered past air shipping control systems and how long they took to ship, the next step would be to send them on planes bound for the United States and Canada, where they would start fires once they arrived. . . dump.
While the main concern was cargo planes, sometimes passenger planes take smaller packages in spare space in their cargo holds.
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