FEARS are growing that Russia could be behind the devastating fire that brought Britain’s busiest airport to a standstill for 24 hours.
A chorus of experts have warned the inferno that ground Heathrow Airport to a halt has “all the hallmarks” of Russian sabotage.
A fire at a substation in Hayes, London, caused widespread outages and shut down Heathrow[/caption]
Counter-terrorism police are on the scene investigating the cause of the fire[/caption]
The blaze follows a chilling wave of Russian intelligence-linked fires, bomb plots, and even assassination attempts across Europe – and has delighted Russian trolls.
Ex-military officials and security experts warned a single substation fire crippling an airport could suggest a state-sponsored attack.
Counter terrorism-police are combing the wreckage for marks of foul-play – but so far no evidence has emerged.
And it would not be first time Vlad has struck on British soil.
Such an attack would follow the infamous Skripal poisoning in Salisbury in 2018 and a fire at a Ukrainian-owned warehouse in east London in 2024, which a Brit has admitted to organising on behalf of Russia.
Former Colonel Hamish de Bretton Gordon, told The Sun: “This has all the hallmarks of Russian sabotage.
“There is still no hard evidence, but circumstantially, this is straight out of Moscow’s sabotage playbook.
“We don’t hear of substations catching fire very often. And for the back up system to fail was well. The timing is very suspicious.”
Security expert Will Geddes, director and founder of the International Corporate Protection Group, said: “Heathrow has been looking at expanding – this isn’t a great advert for their ability to do so safely.
“If I was a foreign hostile party and I wanted to disrupt one of the busiest airports in the world, cause international embarrassment, create many, many question marks, I would target something like a substation.”
John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, said “lessons need to be learned” from the turmoil.
Speaking from Nestles Avenue, close to the site entrance, he told reporters: “The key issue for us now is an investigation into how this occurred and to prevent any future risk.
“The question I think most of us have is not just about how the fire occurred but the fact that the back up arrangements have been taken out as well.
“We need a full investigation and I want to make sure my constituents are safe for the future.”
He added that it is “extraordinary” back up plans didn’t work.
A raging inferno which destroyed a vast shopping centre in Warsaw has been revealed as Russian sabotage[/caption]
A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house near Vilnius, and has been linked to Russian ‘air terror’[/caption]
Two men have been arrested on suspicion of setting fire to an Ikea store in Lithuania, by order of the Russians[/caption]
No10 echoed those calls, insisting answers are needed.
A statement said: “We expect those questions to be answered but our clarity right now is on this incident being appropriately dealt with.
“There is a fire still burning. So, there will be a time for that, but at the moment the priority is to deal with the incident.”
Alan Mendoza, director of the Henry Jackson Society, warned it’s bad news either way.
If the Russians are found to be at the root, he said, “it will absolutely not be then end of it” and we must enact a “resilience programme on steroids”.
And if it was accident, the current chaos will be “too tempting a target” for malign actors to ignore.
He said: “It doesn’t take a genius to work out where we might be targeted going forwards.”
Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the London-based Rusi think tank said: “We are in a broad confrontation with Russia which includes unconventional warfare and sabotage. We need to accept that this is now part of daily life in Europe.”
Putin is known to be behind a spate of attacks across Europe, and experts suspect his involvement in the Heathrow-buckling blaze[/caption]
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been particularly vocal about Russia’s sabotage spate[/caption]
SPATE OF SABOTAGE
Lithuanian authorities revealed last week that the Russians undertook to firebomb an Ikea store last year in the capital Vilnius.
It was reportedly carried out by two “disposable agents”, one of whom was a teen, who were bribed with a BMW and €10,000.
Prosecutors accused the GRU of puppetting the attack on Ikea because its logo uses the same colours as the Ukrainian flag.
Officials connected to Vilnius plot to a huge shopping centre blaze in Poland that happened three days later – which they also attributed to Russia.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed the investigation’s progress, saying it had “confirmed [their] suspicions” that the Russians had masterminded the two attacks.
He added: “Good to know before negotiations. Such is the nature of this state.”
In January, Tusk claimed that Russia carried out what he described as “air terror” against airlines in Poland and other countries.
He said: “I will not go into details, I can only confirm the validity of fears that Russia was planning acts of air terror, not only against Poland but against airlines around the world.”
And multiple vital undersea internet cables have been mysteriously severed in European waters.
RUSSIAN GLEE
Russian trolls have been rubbing their hands.
Kremlin-funded online outlets quickly lit up with posts suggesting Vladmir Putin’s Russian agents triggered the shutdown.
And security experts warned the incident would fit into the “playbook” of Russia’s GRU agent operations.
Several trolls quipped that the blaze was the work of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – the Russian agents who nearly killed traitor Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.
Heathrow’s northern runway stood deserted on Friday after all flights were cancelled[/caption]
A fire at a substation in Hayes, London, caused widespread outages and shut down Heathrow[/caption]
The Russian GRU agents poisoned Skripal and his daughter Yulia with Novichok nerve agent then claimed they had been in Salisbury on a day trip to see the city’s cathedral.
A post on Kremlin-funded Readovka news sneered yesterday: “Petrov and Boshirov came to see the cathedral again.”
Another comment jibed: “Are Petrov and Boshirov on vacation?”
Another wrote: “Now Petrov and Boshirov went to see Big Ben. The excursion was a success.”
Kremlin troll bots began churning out a string of inflammatory messages – before any official Russian comment yesterday.
Vladimir Putin’s agents are known to be waging a “hybrid” war alongside their conventional conflict in Ukraine targeting Kyiv’s European allies.
