Darius Jauniškis, head of the State Security Department (VSD), had a meeting with President Gitanas Nausėda in the Presidential Palace on Monday morning, just a few hours after the deadly DHL cargo plane crash near Vilnius Airport.
Police said the pilot killed during the Boeing 737-476 crash was a Spanish national. Those injured aboard were a Lithuanian, a German and another Spaniard, according to Ramūnas Matonis, spokesman for the Police Department.
"We cannot dismiss the case of, let us say, terrorism. Naturally, the State Security Department (VSD), together with the Department of Operational Services (the Second Department of Operational Services under the. Ministry of National Defence – ELTA), have also warned us that these things are possible in the future, and we are witnessing an increasingly aggressive Russia," the VSD chief told reporters after the meeting.
Jauniškis also said the Lithuanian agencies are working closely with foreign partners.
In early November, Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė confirmed several arrests made in the international investigation into DHL incendiary parcels sent by air from Lithuania to Germany and the United Kingdom in July.
One of the parcels sent via DHL caught on fire in Leipzig, Germany, while the other started a fire in a DHL warehouse in Birmingham, the United Kingdom.
This appears to have been a "test run" to examine how to get incendiary devices on planes flying to North America, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Referring to previous incidents, Jauniškis assured that both DHL and other companies had been alerted to possible acts of sabotage.
"It is extremely difficult to detect [the malicious act] because the operation is conducted in a sophisticated manner and we have a lot of shipments sent. The alert, the alarm level, is really raised all over Europe and all over the world, and we are working with all our strength [to prevent attacks]," he said of the intensified provocations.