Tusk: Lithuanian evidence shows Russia behind fire that destroyed Warsaw shopping centre.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, says that the findings of prosecutors in neighbouring Lithuania indicate that Russia was behind a fire last year that destroyed Warsaw’s biggest shopping centre.
The Warsaw fire was part of a series of acts of sabotage in Poland and other countries in the region that the authorities have blamed on Russia, whose intelligence services recruited and hired people living in those countries – often Ukrainian and Belarusian immigrants – to carry out the attacks.
On Monday morning, Artūras Urbelis, the chief prosecutor at the department of organised crime and corruption of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Lithuania, announced that they believe a fire at an IKEA store in Vilnius last year was a terrorist act organised and financed by Russia.
They have brought an indictment against a Ukrainian citizen accused of carrying out the attack. His suspected co-perpetrator, also Ukrainian, is currently in detention in Poland as part of parallel proceedings into acts of sabotage, said Urbelis, quoted by Lithuanian state broadcaster LRT.
The chief prosecutor added that Lithuania is “transferring part of the case to Polish colleagues”. The two countries have established a joint investigative team to examine cases of sabotage planned and carried out on their territories.
In their statement, Lithuanian prosecutors noted that the suspect they have in detention – who was a minor at the time of the crimes – had met in Poland with his alleged co-conspirator, aged under 20, to plan acts of arson in Lithuania and Latvia as part of a “pre-established organised terrorist group”. He was to be paid €10,000.
“These are young people who clearly lack life experience, who found themselves in a rather difficult financial situation,” said Urbelis, quoted by Polish news website Interia. Such individuals are ideal targets to recruit for such tasks, he added.
Subsequently, during preparations for his attacks, “the accused repeatedly visited Poland and Lithuania [and] collected and transmitted information important for planning terrorist acts to other members of the group via encrypted communication channels”, say the prosecutors
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