The railway line that connects Warsaw with Lublin, in the southeast of Poland, suffered an explosion this weekend that the Polish Prime Minister, the liberal conservative Donald Tusk, has described as “an unprecedented act of sabotage that directly threatens the security of the Polish State and its citizens.” The Government has not identified culprits or suspects yet, but Tusk has stressed that the route attacked is “of vital importance for the shipment of humanitarian aid to Ukraine.”
On Sunday, a train had to brake suddenly when the driver noticed that the track was damaged. None of the 475 passengers carried by the convoy were injured.
In an appearance after a meeting of the State security forces, the head of the Interior, Marcin Kierwinski, reported this Monday that the first calls from neighbors alerting that they had heard a loud noise were received on Saturday around 10:00 p.m.
In addition to a section of track destroyed by an explosive device near the town of Mika, about 100 kilometers southeast of Warsaw, Kierwinski has detailed that there were also damages to 60 meters of power lines and a metal clamp was detected on the rails, a few hundred meters away.
The Internal Security Agency is collaborating with the police, the Prosecutor’s Office and the railway services in the investigation, according to its head, Minister Tomasz Siemoniak. The National Prosecutor’s Office investigates the incidents as “acts of sabotage of a terrorist nature, directed against the railway infrastructure and committed for the benefit of foreign intelligence services,” as reported in the newspaper.
The shadow of the Kremlin hangs over the sabotage, although the incident, which occurred near the town of Mika, about 100 kilometers southeast of the capital, is under investigation and the Government remains cautious.
The Deputy Minister of the Interior, Maciej Duszczyk, even asked the population not to automatically blame Russia for each incident of this type, which has accumulated in Poland in recent years. “Russia is not so powerful as to cause every fire, every situation of this type,” he said in statements to the Polsat network, although he added that “it cannot be ruled out” that Moscow is involved.
Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, former Interior Minister and MEP from Civic Platform, Tusk’s party, however took aim at Russia on Sunday. The sabotage, he assured, “may indicate a new form of hybrid war between Russia and Poland.” “Not a month goes by without Russia committing some type of aggression through people recruited by the Russian security services,” Sienkiewicz said.
NATO is closely monitoring the situation. “We are in close contact with the Polish authorities, the contact is intense but now we have to wait for the result of the investigation,” said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, after receiving Finnish President Alexander Stubb at the Alliance headquarters. Silvia Ayuso reports. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has urged Europe to increase its capacity to protect the infrastructure and skies of Member States. “The threats to our security are real and increasing,” he wrote in X.
Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland has been one of the most assertive countries against Moscow. Both the previous Executive, led by the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party, and the current one, Tusk’s liberal coalition, have defense as a priority. Warsaw, aware that the country, for historical and geographical reasons, is one of the most exposed to the Russian threat, leads NATO’s military spending and aspires to invest 5% of GDP in this area in 2026.
As the media remembers Notes from Polandin 2023, authorities detained 16 members of a group that operated on behalf of Russia and planned, among other acts, to . In recent years, a good number of sabotages have also been recorded, including arson, cyber attacks and other acts that are difficult to attribute and classified as hybrid attacks. The most serious recent incident clearly attributable to Russia was one of those used by Moscow to attack Ukraine.
Tusk does not miss the opportunity to point out that the country is in a pre-war period, and in the most dangerous moment since World War II. The Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, General Wieslaw Kukula, stated along the same lines on Sunday in a radio interview that “the adversary is preparing for war.” “They are creating an environment here whose objective is to create favorable conditions for possible aggression on Polish territory,” he continued.
An extraordinary meeting of the National Security Committee will be held on Tuesday, as reported by Tusk.
