Salmanov denies terrorism charges and calls himself a pacifist

Russian citizen Eldar Salmanov denied guilt and said he was a pacifist during a hearing in the case involving incendiary packages sent abroad, LRT reported. The hearing continued at the Vilnius Regional Court on Thursday.

Salmanov, who lives in Estonia, said a former submarine captain living in Russia, Andrej Baburov, had asked him to send a package to Riga. Baburov is wanted by Lithuania.

Salmanov said a mutual acquaintance, Viačeslav Aliochin, delivered massage devices and massage cushions to his home. It later emerged that incendiary devices had been hidden inside them. Salmanov said he sent the package.

When prosecutor Šarūnas Astrauskas asked whether he agreed that Russia had attacked Ukraine and that a war was taking place, Salmanov did not give a direct answer.

“I am a pacifist. I love peace,” he said.

The court then heard Vadym Borsuk, the nephew of another defendant, Vasilij Kovač. Borsuk said Kovač took him along when transporting incendiary devices hidden in massage cushions from Latvia to Vilnius.

According to Borsuk, they met an unidentified person at an agreed location in Vilnius. His uncle showed the person that the package was in the car boot, after which the person took it and they drove back. Borsuk said he and Kovač travelled to Vilnius twice and delivered two packages.

The defendants are Lithuanian citizen Aleksandras Šuranovas, Ukrainian citizens Borsuk and Kovač, dual Russian and Lithuanian citizen Daniil Jencius, and Russian citizen Salmanov. They face charges of committing a terrorist act and participating in an organised terrorist group whose purpose was to commit terrorist crimes. The defendants are aged between 23 and 69.

In July 2024, four packages were sent from Lithuania to the United Kingdom and Poland. Two packages transported by air reached a sorting centre in Germany. One caught fire at Leipzig Airport shortly before being loaded onto a plane, while the second caught fire in a warehouse in the United Kingdom.

A package sent to Poland caught fire in the truck transporting it. The fourth package, carried by DPD road freight, did not ignite because of a malfunction in the device and was intercepted by officials. An examination identified the device mechanism and assessed the danger it posed.

According to the charges, the fire in the United Kingdom caused almost 400,000 euros in damage, while the damage amounted to 126,000 euros in Germany and nearly 62,000 euros in Poland.

Officials say the defendants were perpetrators and intermediaries, while the organisers of the crime are in Russia and cannot currently be reached. Investigators established that the crimes were organised by Russia’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, known as the GRU.

The case is separate from another investigation involving at least 16 citizens of different countries who organised, planned or helped carry out terrorist crimes in various countries. Law enforcement agencies from Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom, working through a Eurojust-coordinated joint investigation team, stopped planned attacks in Europe involving self-igniting packages and identified those who planned and carried them out.