Poland says Russia behind blast on its rail network
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the blast and another attempted act of sabotage over the weekend were a major escalation by Moscow.
Polish officials have accused Russia of being behind an explosion on its rail network on Saturday, saying two Ukrainian men had collaborated with Russian security services to carry out the attack, almost causing a packed commuter train to careen off the tracks.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday said the blast and another attempted act of sabotage over the weekend were a major escalation by Moscow, which European officials say is waging a shadow war targeting critical infrastructure and civilian and military facilities across the continent.
“A certain threshold has been crossed,” Mr Tusk said in a speech to parliament, describing the acts as the most serious security threat for Poland since the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “Their goal was bringing about a catastrophe on the train line.”
In recent weeks, a series of suspected Russian drones has disrupted airports, grounded flights and put citizens on edge across Central and Eastern Europe, thrusting some countries into a gray-zone conflict with Moscow.
Western officials say Russia is seeking to destabilise members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation through covert acts of sabotage it can easily deny. Mr Tusk said the latest incidents fit into that broader pattern of sabotage, arson and assassination attempts across Europe, which has ramped up over the past two years as Moscow has sought to prevent European nations from ferrying arms to Kyiv.
He said Poland had become a sort of testing ground for such acts, with recent fires at a shopping mall and the incursion into Poland of several Russian drones in what Warsaw called a test of its defences.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement in acts of sabotage or drone incursions in Europe.
Mr Tusk said the attacks over the weekend were carried out by two Ukrainians who had been working for a long time with the Russian security services, and had entered Poland from Belarus in the fall.
One of them attached a steel clamp over the weekend to a line of railway track near the village of Mika, roughly 62 miles south of the capital Warsaw, with the aim of causing the train to derail. Another of the suspects placed a device filled with C4 explosive on the track, Mr Tusk said.
The explosive device was detonated remotely on Saturday evening at a moment when a Warsaw-bound train was driving over it, but most of the combustible material failed to explode, and only very light damage was sustained to the undercarriage of the train, Mr Tusk said.
A local resident, startled by the sound of the explosion, called the police later that evening, but officers who scoured the area after dark didn’t discover damage to the tracks, Mr Tusk said.
The following morning, a passenger train travelling between Warsaw and the eastern city of Lublin was forced to make an emergency stop after damage was spotted on the tracks.
The route is a crucial part of the network for delivering aid to Ukraine.
In an incident further down the track, a train carrying 475 passengers was forced to stop Sunday evening after damage to an overhead line shattered the windows in one of the carriages, according to local authorities.
Mr Tusk said his government was working diplomatic channels and co-ordinating with allies to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, who fled the country shortly after carrying them out. “We’ll do everything to apprehend the perpetrators of these acts,” he said.
Mr Tusk said Poland had so far caught 55 people suspected in acts of sabotage on its territory, and arrested 24 of them. He said Russia often hires Ukrainian citizens to carry out such acts in part because it wants to fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment in European countries that have admitted hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war.
“The model is always very similar,” he said.
General Wies aw Kuku-a, chief of the general staff of the Polish Army, called the latest sabotage an act of aggression. “The enemy is preparing for war, setting the conditions for an act of aggression on Poland,” Mr Kuku-a said Monday on the country’s state-run radio station.
Dow Jones
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