World
Lithuania Says It Broke Up Russian Sabotage and Murder Plots
Ruslan Gabbasov knew his activism had made him a target of Russia’s security services, so when he found an Apple AirTag tracker hidden under the hood of his car last spring, he understood it meant trouble.
Just not how much trouble.
The discovery of the tracking device triggered a sprawling, yearlong investigation by the authorities in Lithuania, where Mr. Gabbasov, an advocate for minority rights, had sought asylum after fleeing Russia in 2021. That investigation culminated this week when Lithuanian officials announced the arrests of nine people accused of plotting murders and sabotage across Europe at the behest of Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the G.R.U.
The group set fire to military equipment in Bulgaria that was destined for Ukraine and carried out surveillance of Greek military installations, according to a statement released by the Lithuanian police. Among those arrested was a man in his 50s captured outside Mr. Gabbasov’s home in Lithuania, where he lives with his wife and 5-year-old son. The man, who the authorities said had Greek and Russian citizenship, was armed with a pistol, the police said.
Mr. Gabbasov said he was at a McDonald’s, drinking coffee, when the police called, frantic, to tell him, “You simply have no idea the danger you’re in.”
“I understood that I was a person of interest for the Russian secret services,” Mr. Gabbasov said in a phone interview. “But I didn’t think it would go so far as murder.”
The case is a reminder of the threat Russia poses to the West at a time when Washington has shifted focus from Europe’s eastern flank and the war in Ukraine to the Middle East. Western intelligence officials assess that dismantling institutions like NATO and the European Union, and undermining Western diplomatic ties, remains a key foreign policy goal of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
In parallel to Moscow’s military action in Ukraine, Russia’s intelligence services have waged a campaign of sabotage in Europe that has escalated over the years from vandalism to bombings, arson and murder plots, according to intelligence agencies in multiple countries. Countries that are Ukraine’s biggest supporters, and anti-Putin Russians living in exile, have been the primary targets. Railroad tracks in Poland used to transport military hardware have been bombed and warehouses storing goods destined for Ukraine have been burned down in Britain and Spain.
The most dramatic of these plots to date involved placing incendiary devices inside packages meant to be loaded onto DHL cargo planes. Two of the devices ignited at shipping facilities in Britain and Germany and another went off inside a truck in Poland.
Lithuania, where the DHL packages originated, has led that investigation, as well, which so far has resulted in more than a dozen arrests, mostly of proxies recruited online by the Russian intelligence services with promises of cash, the authorities say.
The use of proxies is a typical strategy employed by Russia’s intelligence services, Western officials say. On Wednesday, German authorities announced the arrest of a Kazakh national accused of providing Russia’s intelligence services with information about Germany’s military support for Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly denied that its intelligence services are involved in sabotage and homicide.
In the case involving Mr. Gabbasov, the Lithuanian authorities said, the network they broke up involved citizens of Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Latvia, Moldova and Lithuania. The investigation, according to the Lithuanian police statement, “established direct connections between the perpetrators and the people who ordered the murders, acting in the interests of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” as the G.R.U. is called officially.
“We have been facing a series of hybrid-type criminal acts that are in fact directed against European Union countries, their national security interests, and individuals who in one way or another support Ukraine,” Saulius Briginas, Deputy Head of the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau, said at a news conference on Monday. “The nature and objectives of these criminal acts align with those of the Russian Federation.”
Lithuanian authorities released few details about the plots. They said several people who had supported Ukraine or worked against Russia had been targeted for murder. They did not offer a number, and most have not been identified.
In addition to Mr. Gabbasov, a Lithuanian citizen named Valdas Bartkevičius said that he was also targeted for murder, which the authorities confirmed. Mr. Bartkevičius has gained notoriety for anti-Russian stunts including defacing Soviet World War II monuments and bringing a bucket of feces to a memorial to victims of a terrorist attack in Moscow.
“It’s logical they’re trying to kill me,” Mr. Bartkevičius said in a phone interview from Ukraine, where he has been assisting the Ukrainian military.
After alerting the authorities about the AirTag, Mr. Gabbasov, 46, said he was used as bait in a “cat-and-mouse game” with his would-be killers. Lithuanian police set up surveillance cameras at his home and near his car. He was told to inform the police whenever he planned to leave home and when he planned to return.
But in March last year, Mr. Gabbasov forgot to tell them when he left home with his family to attend festivities marking the anniversary of Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union. While he was at the McDonald’s, the armed man took up position outside of his home. He said the police told him that the man, who was arrested, was dressed and equipped to wait “all night,” if necessary, for Mr. Gabbasov to return, though they provided few other details.
The arrest was first announced this week, along with those of others in the investigation that followed.
Mr. Gabbasov said the police offered to put him into a witness protection program, but he declined because he did not want to step away from his activism. He has agitated for independence for his native Bashkortostan, a mostly Muslim region of central Russia. In response, Russian authorities have put a bounty on his head and added him to Russia’s version of a terrorist watch list. In March, he was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison.
Despite the arrests by Lithuania, Mr. Gabbasov does not expect the threat to subside.
“The end of the story will come when the Putin regime collapses,” he said.
MOUNT VERNON, Va. (AP) — The people who were about to become United States citizens sat in folding chairs on George Washington’s lawn at Mount Vernon on Saturday, 250 years after the Declaration of Independence.
The sun beat down and the well-dressed crowd was a flutter of paddle fans stamped with American flags. Their families clung to the shade of the trees on either side, where one woman had two American flags stuck through her ponytail.
“Well, good morning, everybody,” said Anne Neal Petri, the regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.
“Good morning!” an excited crowd returned.
“And Happy Birthday, United States of America!” exclaimed Petri.
There were 150 people from 50 globe-spanning countries sitting in front of the small stage as they prepared to be sworn in as U.S. citizens on the July Fourth holiday and America’s 250th birthday. Among them was U.S. Marine Sgt. Diakaria Sangare from Guinea, who attended in his pressed Dress Blue uniform with three medals pinned to his left breast.
Sangare had served two deployments, and, like all assembled, had gone through the long citizenship process: The test, interviews, green cards and biometrics. Others in the crowd, it was said, came from countries bathed in violence. Some fled persecution.
After a speech about Washington, the crowd was asked to rise for the national anthem.
They did. Their hats came off and their hands covered their hearts. The paddle fans calmed.
The singer belted the words: “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there” — as Sangare held his right hand in a rigid salute, his face sober.
As the song concluded, the soon-to-be citizens clapped and returned to their seats, while another speaker asked them to stand and remain standing when their country was called.
“Albania.”
A woman in the front row with long black hair rose with a broad grin, a small U.S. flag in her hand.
“Bangladesh.”
A man in a black shirt stood. The Albanian woman, looking back, beamed at him.
It went on for 50 countries, through China and El Salvador and Iraq and Mongolia, as people stood, sometimes smiling, sometimes sedate.
At “Morocco,” a man in the back thrusts his fists in the air in support. A young boy looked up at him and then did the same, a little flag in his fist.
Then the crowd, with hands raised, recited an Oath of Allegiance, not so different from the oath Washington signed in 1778.
“Congratulations,” they were told. “You just became U.S. citizens.”
There was applause and laughter, then the Pledge of Allegiance. Sangare, his hand now over his heart, closed his eyes for a moment.
Nearby stood a tulip poplar tree, planted at Washington’s direction 250 years ago, that had lived through America’s history.
The next speaker, historian Douglas Bradburn, pointed it out in his speech before the day’s special guest.
“All the stories that are part of you, now become American stories,” said Bradburn. “When people ask me what are American people like, I now can talk about you, and your stories.”
“The second side of that is that, now, all America’s stories, and our history, are your stories. The father of your country is George Washington.”
The first president, it turned out, was the next speaker.
As he was introduced, the re-enactor stood by a massive draped American flag, a sword scabbard on his hip. Then he donned the stage, doffed his cap to the audience, and began to speak.
“Today the name of ‘American’ belongs to you every bit as much as it does to me,” he said. He spoke to their arduous journeys to this point and their histories, now merged with America.
“So, my fellow Americans, to you, I say simply: ‘Welcome home’.”
Afterward, Sangare, the U.S. Marine, posed for a portrait, hands clasped in front of him, holding the American flag paddle fan, his Marine cap slightly askew.
“I just became a United States citizen,” he said, his emotions pushing out in an earnest smile.
____ Bedayn reported from Austin, Texas.
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Tens of thousands of far-left protesters flooded the streets and clashed with police in the Germany city of Erfurt on Saturday as they protested the conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Videos showed police beating back agitators with batons and deploying anti-riot ordnance as the demonstrators chanted against the country’s conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in a massive political rally.
Police said over 30,000 people attended the demonstrations, according to the Associated Press (AP), and people could be seen carrying signs reading “Stop AfD Nazis” and “For Diversity, Against Nazis.”
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Despite the tense clashes caught on video, police told news outlets the demonstrations have been “mostly peaceful,” and claimed they’ve recorded approximately 100 law violations, mostly due to graffiti.
The standoff in the city of Erfurt, Thuringia state, comes as the opposition Alternative for Germany party is soaring in national opinion polls ahead of all other parties. (RALF HIRSCHBERGER / AFP via Getty Images)
The protests coincided with AfD’s party conference and leadership elections during which the party, the second largest parliamentary group in Germany’s Bundestag parliament, re-elected Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla as the party co-leaders.
The mass demonstrations delayed AfD’s vote, prompting Chrupalla to criticize the method in which agitators expressed their dissatisfaction.
Thousands of demonstrators flooded a German city on July 4, 2026, blocking major roads and disrupting public transport, in a bid to shut down the annual congress of the conservative AfD party. (RALF HIRSCHBERGER / AFP via Getty Images)
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“There are no peaceful seated blockades. There are no democratic roadblocks. Nor are there any gangs of thugs who deserve the harmless label ‘civil society.’ These troublemakers are the last resort of our political rivals,” Chrupalla said, according to the AP.
Protesters gather before a party convention of Alternative for Germany, or AfD in Erfurt, Germany, Saturday, July 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Chrupalla also accused the protesters of acting anti-democratically. “They believe they have a monopoly on democracy. To these demonstrators I say: this democracy is just as much our democracy as it is yours.”
A spokesperson for local antifascist group widersetzen explicitly claimed that the group’s intention was to block AfD’s party convention.
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“The AfD pursues fascist policies: It wants mass deportations and terror on the streets. At the same time, however, it doesn’t solve a single real problem,” widersetzen spokesperson Lena Raupach told the AP. “It pursues policies that benefit the rich, not ordinary citizens. And we at widersetzen want a society in which all people have equal opportunities and equal security. We want a society based on solidarity.”
AfD, while fighting accusations of extremism from citizens and center-left and center-right politicians in the country’s ruling coalition, rejects the notion that it is extreme, arguing it is “being used as a political instrument by mainstream parties,” according to the AP.
The party has been experiencing a historic surge in popularity in recent years, grabbing over 20% of the national vote in federal elections in 2025 with an eye on capturing even more in the next election. Some federal polls have the party ranked as the most popular in the country today.
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“We will win. Maybe we’ll be able to govern alone soon,” Chrupalla said Saturday. “That would send the right message to the enemies of democracy out there who wanted to prevent our party convention from taking place.”
Partygoers widely support the conservative moment fashioned by President Donald Trump and the party shares similar stances on social, cultural and domestic issues as the Trump administration, particularly on immigration. Perhaps inspired by Trump’s trademark slogan, one party conference attendee Saturday could be seen sporting a “Make Germany Great Again” hat.
A man is wearing a “Make Germany Great Again” cap at the convention center. The AfD’s national party convention will take place on July 4 and 5 at the Erfurt Convention Center. (Martin Schutt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The Italian government is sounding the alarm after 80 vials of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to one hundred times more powerful than morphine, were stolen from Rome’s Israelitic Hospital.
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The missing quantity would be enough to produce up to around 20,000 doses potentially destined for illicit use, which in countries such as the United States and Canada has become a national emergency.
Fentanyl is used legally in medicine as an anaesthetic and to treat severe pain, including in cancer patients. But taking this “party anaesthetic” for non-medical purposes has devastating effects. As little as 3 milligrams of the “zombie drug” (as it is known when mixed with xylazine) are enough to kill a person.
In Italy too, its growing spread on the illegal drug market has raised public health concerns, leading to a “National prevention plan against the improper use of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids” presented in March 2024 by the Anti-Drugs Policy Department of the Prime Minister’s Office.
How the fentanyl theft unfolded
The head of the hospital pharmacy reported the theft on 24 June. What is striking is the absence of any sign of forced entry on the safe where the vials were kept, the keys to which are held by several members of staff.
Prosecutors in Rome have opened an investigation. An initial report on the incident has been sent to the criminal court of the capital. The inquiries have been entrusted to the Carabinieri’s NAS unit. The case concerns allegations of theft and possession with intent to supply narcotic substances.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Health – at the instigation of Minister Schillaci – has launched an inspection through its competent offices. The ministry is also preparing “a new circular to further step up checks on the improper use and circulation of fentanyl and on how it is stored in medical and hospital facilities”.
The government’s response
The theft prompted an emergency meeting at Palazzo Chigi, chaired by undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano. During the meeting “the need to ensure compliance with the procedures laid down for the management of high-risk medicines, in order to protect public health and prevent similar incidents from happening again” was reiterated.
“In the coming days,” it was explained, “the monitoring committee on the implementation of the anti-fentanyl plan will be reconvened at Palazzo Chigi, with the aim of ensuring that all the parties involved put in place the necessary safeguards and controls”.
Meanwhile, the Lazio Region has ordered an extraordinary inspection visit to Rome’s Israelitic Hospital to check how the hospital pharmacy manages narcotic drugs.
At the same time, it “announces that it has instructed the territorially competent local health authorities to verify the proper management of narcotic drugs in the region’s various hospitals, thereby extending the control measures to the entire regional territory so as to guarantee the highest safety standards”.
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