The Russian military intelligence was behind the arson of the IKEA store warehouse in Vilnius in 2024, said Arturas Urbialis, the chief prosecutor of the organized crime investigation department of the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office, on Monday. The case of the "terrorist attack" has been handed over to the court.
"The collected data allowed us to conclude that the organizers were the Russian military intelligence. The investigation in this direction is ongoing," Urbialis is quoted by the publication Delfi.
As writes Delfi, on May 9 last year, a fire started in the capital's IKEA shopping center. On March 17, the police reported that it was a terrorist attack — the explosives were planted by two teenagers, Ukrainian citizens recruited by Russian special services. One of them has been charged in Lithuania, and the other was detained in Poland, where he will be tried.
The accused, who was a minor at the time of the crime, acquired special skills necessary for sabotage and terrorist acts, the investigation reported. In the spring of 2024, he arrived in Poland. During a secret meeting in Warsaw, the teenagers promised to set fire to and blow up shopping centers in Lithuania and Latvia for a reward of 10,000 euros.
As the publication writes, IKEA was "chosen deliberately because this chain left Russia." As a result of the fire, damage amounted to 485,519 euros.
In May last year, European intelligence services warned their governments that Russia was planning sabotage across the continent, as it had finally determined its relations with the West, taking a course towards harsh confrontation. As Financial Times wrote, according to intelligence officers, the Russian leadership is not concerned about the number of civilian casualties.