DHL plane crashes months after Russia ‘planted exploding parcels on UK-bound flight’

Fears have been raised around Russian sabotage in relation with a DHL cargo plane crash this morning which killed one and injured three others near the Lithuanian capital.

The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a ‘DHL cargo plane flying from Leipzig, Germany, to Vilnius Airport’.

The plane crashed near a house as it was on its final approach for landing, local authorities said.

It comes just months after Russian-backed saboteurs were believed to be behind a firebomb which detonated at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham – dubbed a ‘test run’ by Russian spies.

Before the blaze in Birmingham, a near-identical fire occurred at a DHL warehouse in Leipzig, Germany – where the plane that crashed this morning happened to have departed from – with another suspect package bound for a flight thought to be the source of the blaze.

European authorities, including MI6, previously alleged that Russia is behind the expanding campaign of sabotage on planes. 

The plane’s engine crashed directly into a residential home (Picture: AFP)

It has been reported that a DHL cargo plane crashed earlier this morning (Picture: Getty)

Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center said: ‘One crew member was found without any signs of life, two were rescued, they were taken to hospital,’ according to LRT.

Head of the State Security Department in Lithuania Darius Jauniškis said they could not ‘rule out’ Russia being behind the early morning plane crash.

‘We have been warned that those things are possible in the future. We see Russia becoming more aggressive, and foreign partners are also on the air, talking about dangers and cases of sabotage or a certain threat of terrorism,’ he said.

‘We cannot rule out this version either. So far, no attributions or finger-pointing are really possible because there is no such information.’ 

But Russian affairs expert Keir Giles told Metro today suspicion will ‘inevitably’ fall on Russia for the crash, and it should be possible to establish the cause of the plane’s demise quickly.

Emergency services rushed to the scene near to the capital Vilnius last night (PIcture: X)

He said: ‘The aircraft’s black boxes will give an indication of what brought it down and what the pilot knew before the crash.

‘That’s very different from when Russia carries out a murder with an exotic poison, because dead victims cannot tell the story,’ he added.

If the crash is proven to be a result of a Russian attack, Mr Giles said it should prove to Europe that they are, in fact, ‘at war’ with Russia. 

‘If this is proven to be a Russian attack, the choice of a cargo aircraft as a target may be deliberate,’ Mr Giles explained.

‘Russia may wish to demonstrate its capability to bring down aircraft in Europe – and Polish intelligence has already detected longer-term plans to target flights to the US and Canada – but without, yet, causing the kind of mass casualty incident that would inevitably result from bringing down a passenger airliner.’

Thomas Haldenwang, the former president of Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, echoed Mr Giles’ concerns to Politico: ‘We have been observing aggressive actions by the Russian intelligence services for some time now.

‘Russia is using the entire toolbox, from influencing political discussions to cyber attacks on critical infrastructure to sabotage on a significant scale.’

Keir Giles told Metro it should be possible to find the cause of the plane crash this morning relatively quickly (Picture: CNN)

Russia is suspected to have been targeting aircraft systems for years, but only recently caught attention for affecting RyanAir, Wizz-Air, British Airlines, Easyjet, TUI and Jet2.

Between August 2023 and March 2024 alone, 46,000 flights in areas such as the Baltic, Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean logged interference issues.

Warnings of Russian interference with plane navigation systems are not unheard of – and the Kremlin has continued to deny any wrongdoing.

In 2019, the Norwegian defence ministry brought up the issue in a bilateral meeting with Russian officials.

The electronic attacks have also been allegedly deployed in the Donbas, eastern Ukraine, dating back to 2015.