Experts Warn Heathrow Fire Might Be Linked to Putin: Is Russian Sabotage at Play?

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.

One theory is that the cause of the blaze is an old and faulty transformer that broke and caught fire.

However, the inferno is just the latest in a string of Russian intelligence-related fires, bomb schemes, and assassination endeavors throughout Europe – much to the satisfaction of Russian trolls.

Former military personnel and security specialists have previously cautioned that one isolated power station fire causing chaos at an airport could indicate an attack backed by a government entity.

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.

This potential assault echoes an incident in 2024 when a fire broke out at a warehouse in east London owned by a Ukrainian entity, an act that a British citizen has confessed to orchestrating in support of Russia.

Russia’s bile-spitting former PM has already goaded Keir Starmer into blaming Russia, taunting: “I’m looking forward to Russia being blamed for the Heathrow fire. What are you waiting for, Starmer?”

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.”

Ex-Major General Jonathan Shaw, a former director of Special Forces and expert on UK resilience, said: “Obviously we should be worried that this could be Russia.

“It is definitely a possibility. And it shows how vulnerable we are. We need a complete change of mindset.”

And another senior defence source, talking on the condition of anonymity, said: “I think the government needs to look very carefully at what caused a vital substation to burst into flames just after a conference in London to talk about putting European military in Ukraine.

“We need to be certain it was just an accident.”

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.”

He added: “We need a full investigation and I want to make sure my constituents are safe for the future” and said it was “extraordinary” that back up plans didn’t work.

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.”

Mike Martin MP, who sits on the defence select committee, told The Sun: “Whilst we don’t know the cause of this fire, it demonstrates the extent to which a lot of Britain’s key infrastructure is not resilient”.

“A single fire has taken out one of the world’s busiest airports for an entire day. In this new era of instability and increased aggression from hostile states, the Government must prioritise looking to build up resilience in Britain’s infrastructure to safeguard the services we depend on.”

Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk at MI6, told Times Radio he believes Russia could be to blame.

He said: “Yes, I think what Russia is doing at the moment is it’s using proxies.”

Steele cited Russia’s role behind the London warehouse fire and explosives on a plane bound to Birmingham to insist Putin’s involvement “can’t be ruled out” in this case.

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 the fire was an 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.”

Defence analyst Paul Beaver told The Sun he strongly suspected the Heathrow fire was triggered by Russian agents.

Beaver – a lecturer, author and historian with decades of experience studying Russian threats – said: “This smacks, to me, of a Russian operation to test the resilience of critical infrastructure.

“I have been looking closely at the type of target Russian agents might choose and it seems to me an odd coincidence that this particular substation suddenly bursts into flames.”

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.”

And Anthony Glees, a European affairs expert at the University of Buckingham, said Putin will be “laughing his backside off” whether he was behind the fire or not.

SPATE OF SABOTAGE

Lithuanian authorities revealed this 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 the 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.”

A Ukrainian-owned warehouse was set alight in east London – an attack orchestrated by a Brit who has admitted he was doing Russia’s bidding.

And multiple vital undersea internet cables have been mysteriously severed in European waters.

RUSSIAN GLEE

Russian trolls have been rubbing their hands as Britain flounders.

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.

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.