A suspected plot by Russia the destruction of cargo-carrying aircraft could be part of wider preparations by the Kremlin to carry out mass terrorist attacks on the West, an intelligence expert has warned.

Keir Gilesa senior researcher on Russia at the Chatham House think tank, told The and Paper in which a DHL warehouse was set on fire Birmingham in July may have revealed how Moscow is preparing for any direct conflict with nato.

Western officials believe the huge fire at an industrial estate near the M6 in July was caused by an incendiary device inside a package disguised as an electric massager being sent from Lithuania to the US or Canada.

The package allegedly contained a highly flammable “magnesium-based substance” that would have burned strongly enough to bring down a plane, and was an attempt by Moscow’s GRU security service to discover how it could. sabotaging transatlantic flightssources said The Wall Street Journal this week.

The Kremlin has denied responsibility, but the incendiary device is believed to have been shipped from the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, by an alleged Russian proxy.

Lithuanian police have arrested a suspect who sent four incendiary devices, including two via DHL from Vilnius.

More than 50 firefighters were needed to tackle the blazes in Birmingham this summer, with 13 fire engines and three response vehicles required.

A similar package is believed to have caused a fire in a container at a DHL logistics center in Leipzig, with “aggressive behavior” by Russian agents being charged by German authorities last month.

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence, Thomas Haldenwang, said it was pure chance that this device exploded on the ground rather than in the air, which “would have led to an accident”.

Russian intelligence services are “putting people’s lives at risk” through actions that endanger “all areas of our free society”, he told a parliamentary committee in Berlin.

A transport company near Warsaw was also affected. Four people have been arrested in Poland in connection with the three incidents, the country’s national prosecutor said. At least two other suspects are being sought.

Polish foreign intelligence chief Paweł Szota said: “I’m not sure that Russia’s political leaders are aware of the consequences if one of these packages were to explode (during a flight), causing a mass casualty event.”

Polish prosecutors believe that the purpose of the operation was “to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were eventually to be sent to the United States of America and Canada.”

Mr Giles, who is also director of the Research Center for Conflict Studies, said: “This is the missing element of the Russian campaign that we have been looking for for some time.

“We expected that, eventually, mass casualty terrorist attacks would resume. They seem to have reached that point now.”

Giles explained that the Soviet Union used to “sponsor organized terrorist groups to carry out mass casualty attacks in Western capitals” until the end of the Cold War.

After years of targeted operations – such as the attempted assassination of ex-spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 – Mr Giles believes Moscow is now examining how to carry out “indiscriminate attacks with mass casualties”.

The GRU has already taken other actions that “would all be reasonable ways for Russia to prepare for military action against a NATO nation,” he added.

But Mr Giles fears the plot is just one aspect of Moscow’s decision to up the ante on Western military support for Ukraine during Russia’s bloody invasion.

“In terms of their overall objective, we have a spectrum of possibilities,” he explained. “At one end, this is the standard Russian routine of simply finding ways to cause damage, to cause disruption, to cause costs. In that zero-sum view of security, if you weaken your supposed adversary – like us – then that makes Russia, by comparison, stronger.

“At the other end, and this is the worst case scenario, many of the attacks are not random – like just burning down an Ikea or a shopping center in Warsaw.

“I am against the logistics, communications and emergency preparedness infrastructure in a strip of Europe that would be essential for moving reinforcements to the front line in the event of an open armed conflict between Russia and NATO.

“There is a list of actions that we expected Russia to take before moving against a NATO nation. They all included cyber-reconnaissance and cyber-attacks, arson, proxy recruitment – ​​and they’ve met that checklist since earlier this year.”

Like their European counterparts, British intelligence officials have recently warned of the increased threat from Russia.

MI5 chief Ken McCallum said last month that the GRU was pursuing “sustained chaos on British and European streets“, having already committed “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness”.

After the fires in Birmingham and Leipzig, German security agencies issued a notice warning of several similar incidents in which parcels were “displayed by private individuals in Europe and caught fire on their way to recipients in several countries European”.

There is growing concern over what security officials believe are Russian-sponsored acts of sabotage ordered by Moscow but carried out by local proxies.

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Mr. Giles, the author of the new book Who will defend Europe?said, “Anyone who isn’t worried hasn’t been paying attention.”

But he expressed frustration that some European governments are still shying away from revealing what is already happening and taking a stronger stance against Russia.

If one of this summer’s arson attacks had caused an airborne disaster, it could legitimately have been seen as an act of war, he said. “But would it be called an act of war by the victim state? Not necessarily. They will only do this if they are truly willing and able to do something about it.

“It’s the same reason they’re not even called terrorism, even though they meet all the definitions… Instead, it’s labeled ‘hybrid warfare,’ which is a nice, cozy way of saying the problem is too hard to solve. .”

DHL said it was cooperating with the investigation.

@robhastings