Polish authorities have accused Russia of rail sabotage attacks over the weekend, while arresting two Ukrainian men said to be responsible for the incidents. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said these attacks constituted “perhaps the most serious — when it comes to the security of the Polish state — incidents since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine” in February 2022. If verified, this would be the latest example of Russian hybrid warfare, which, as you can read about here, is just below the threshold of armed conflict. In this context, it’s a means of creating disruption and sowing fear, but, so long as it uses proxies to achieve its aims, it remains very hard for such activities to be directly traced back to the Kremlin.
The main incident occurred on Sunday in the village of Mika, in the Masovian Voivodeship, in east-central Poland, and involved the use of a military-grade C-4 plastic explosive that was supposed to blow up a train. The explosives were to be detonated via a 300-meter (328-yard) cable.
The explosive went off under a freight train, which suffered minor damage to its undercarriage, but more serious damage was inflicted on the tracks. The next train had already been warned about the problem and was able to stop in time.
Tusk said that “a certain line has been crossed,” since the incident could have been much worse if it weren’t for undisclosed errors made in the execution of the attack by the perpetrators.
A second incident occurred further down the same railway line on Sunday, where a busy train was forced to stop suddenly. This is considered likely another case of sabotage, though not involving an explosion.
Speaking in the Polish parliament, Tusk said today that the rail sabotage incidents were “unprecedented” and warned of “escalation” by Russian intelligence services. The Polish prime minister said these activities aimed to sow chaos across Europe and to foster opposition to governments’ support for Ukraine. They also aimed to hamper the delivery of arms and other aid to Ukraine by targeting train lines connecting the two countries.
Tusk said that Polish authorities receive dozens of alerts each day, not all of which are genuine, increasing the burden on the services investigating them.
“These acts of sabotage and the actions of Russian services across the whole of Europe, not only in Poland, are unfortunately gaining momentum,” Tusk told lawmakers.
Tusk claimed that the Kremlin is interested “not only in the direct effect of this type of actions, but also the social and political consequences,” including spreading “disorganization, chaos, panic, speculation, uncertainty,” and “the stirring up of possibly radically anti-Ukrainian sentiments.”
“This is particularly dangerous in countries like Poland, where we have enough burdens that we bear due to over a million Ukrainian refugees in Poland,” Tusk added.
Poland today identified two Ukrainian men who it says were the main suspects behind the sabotage incidents. Authorities in Warsaw said the perpetrators are thought to be working for the Russian intelligence services, who organized their crossing into Poland from Belarus this fall. After the attack, the two men are said to have fled to Belarus.
If the accused are the perpetrators, this would fit with the pattern of Moscow’s use of so-called ‘disposable agents’. These individuals are recruited, often online, to undertake specific acts of sabotage. Often paid in cryptocurrency, they may well be unaware that their masters are in Russian intelligence. In this way, sabotage campaigns can be orchestrated from Russia, with no need to put its own agents into the field. Ukrainians, Belarusians, and other nationalities have been recruited for such activities. In this case, Tusk said that the use of Ukrainians was deliberate, to help promote anti-Ukrainian feelings in Poland.
Poland has said it will respond to the sabotage attacks by increasing the threat level to protect selected rail routes. Poland will raise the alert level to its third level out of four. However, the rail network elsewhere in the country will remain unchanged, at the second level.
European leaders outside Poland have also responded to the attacks.
In the neighboring Czech Republic, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said that the Polish rail sabotage was “extremely alarming.”
In a post on X, Fiala wrote: “Russia is behaving in an openly hostile manner towards us and has long been undermining the security and stability of Europe. We must not be naive or underestimate the risks we are facing. It is our duty to strengthen our defense, invest in security, cooperate with our allies, and be prepared to confront similar attacks.”
Meanwhile, the Kremlin accused Poland of “Russophobia” after its allegations.
“Russia is accused of all manifestations of the hybrid and direct war that is taking place,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a Russian state television reporter. “In Poland, let’s say, everyone is trying to run ahead of the European locomotive in this regard. And Russophobia, of course, is flourishing there,” he said.
Bordering Poland, Ukraine, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, Poland has been very much on the frontline of the hybrid war being waged by Russia alongside its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to Tusk, Poland has faced multiple sabotage incidents in recent years, resulting in 55 people being detained. However, there is, by now, a broader pattern of attacks, with other acts of Russian sabotage in Europe, including in Moldova, Romania, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Poland has experienced a series of major arson and sabotage attacks in recent years, including parcel bombings, which it sees as part of Moscow’s hybrid war on the West.
In September, Russian drone incursions into Polish airspace were deemed deliberate by Poland, which claimed they were a calculated test of NATO’s ability to react to aerial threats. Polish authorities said 19 Russian drones entered the country’s airspace, with some of them being shot down by Polish and Dutch combat aircraft. You can catch up to our reporting on the incident in our story here.
Poland also faces a threat from rogue Russian missiles targeting Ukraine.
In November 2022, two Polish citizens were killed by falling debris when Ukraine shot down a Russian missile near the Polish border using a surface-to-air missile.
There have been promises made to provide Poland with additional air defense resources, and NATO is reviewing how to improve its collective defenses.
Previously, European and NATO members took a more circumspect tone when discussing these incidents.
However, both Prime Minister Tusk and the Polish security services have put the blame for the rail sabotage squarely on Moscow.
The Polish security services minister’s spokesperson, Jacek Dobrzyński, confirmed that “everything indicates” that Russian intelligence services were behind the sabotage incidents in Poland. “The fact is that everything indicates that this … we can already confidently call it a terrorist attack, was initiated by special services from the East,” he later added.
At this stage, however, no details have been released that explain how responsibility has been traced back to Russia.
“I cannot say what stage the officers are [at] or [what they are] currently working on and what threads they are connecting or what threads they are analysing. The Russian services would very much want to have this information: where our officers are or in which direction they are heading,” Dobrzyński said.
Summing up the situation that Poland, a key ally of Ukraine and a NATO member of growing military stature, faces on the fringes of the war in Ukraine, the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland Władysław Marcin Kosiniak-Kamysz, said that the country faced “a state between war and peace, where we have attacks, acts of sabotage, disinformation on a gigantic scale on the internet, the destruction, or attempts at destruction, of critical infrastructure across the whole of Europe.”
For a while, Europe has been more alert to the prospect of these kinds of infrastructure attacks, orchestrated by Moscow, becoming much more common across the continent. The incidents in Poland are further evidence of the level of threat.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com