Biden aides warned Putin as Russia’s shadow war threatens air disaster

After seemingly innocent shipments began catching fire at airports and warehouses in Germany, Britain and Poland over the summer, there was little doubt in Washington and Europe that Russia was at war. origin of the sabotage.

But in August, White House officials became increasingly alarmed by secretly obtained intelligence suggesting that Moscow had a much larger plan in mind: bringing the war in Ukraine to American shores.

The question was how to send a warning to the one man who could stop it: Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

In a series of Situation Room briefings, President Biden’s top aides reviewed details of conversations between senior officials at the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, who described shipments of consumer products that took fire – in one case, a small electronic massager – as a test.

Once the Russians figured out how packages got past air cargo screening systems and how long they took to ship, the next step seemed to be to send them on planes bound for the United States and the Canada, where they would start fires once they arrived. dump.

While the main concern was with cargo planes, sometimes passenger planes carry smaller packages in free space in their holds.