GERMANY – German leaders raised the possibility that a fiery cargo plane crash in Lithuania on Monday was the result of sabotage or hybrid warfare. The cargo plane was flying from Leipzig, Germany, and was due to land at Vilnius Airport when it crashed a few kilometers from the runway. The plane skidded on the ground for several hundred meters before hitting a residential home, authorities in Lithuania said.

Asked on Monday evening whether the crash was the result of hybrid warfare, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told public broadcaster ZDF: “We are looking at this closely, we can’t say at the moment, but it could be so – there are very many bad forms of hybrid warfare that we are seeing in Germany.” Scholz said the cause of the crash “needs to be investigated closely. But we won’t make an accusation until we can prove it”. His comments follow similar remarks by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock who, according to Reuters, told reporters at a G7 summit: “The fact that we, together with our Lithuanian and Spanish partners, must now seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident (or) another hybrid incident shows what volatile times we are currently living in, even in the center of Europe.”

On Tuesday, Baerbock added that several recent incidents fit Russia’s pattern of “destabilization and division,” noting that “thousands of propaganda bots, disrupted GPS signals or even a data cable in the Baltic Sea that is cut – those cannot all be coincidences at the same time.” Meanwhile, Lithuanian authorities downplayed the prospect of nefarious activity, insisting that no evidence pointing to sabotage had yet been uncovered. “Our initial information does not indicate that we need to be investigating more serious actions,” Prosecutor Arturas Urbelis said in a Tuesday statement, according to Reuters. “We might find signs of activities of other kinds as we investigate,” he added. (CNN)

Photo: CCTV video shows moment of deadly plane crash in Lithuania.