On Sunday, the railway line linking the Polish capital, Warsaw, to the city of Lublin in the southeast of the country was exposed to an explosion, which the liberal conservative Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, described as “an unprecedented act of sabotage that directly threatens the security of the Polish state and its citizens.” The government has not yet identified the perpetrators or suspects, but Tusk confirmed this in a post on the social network
A police statement explained that none of the 475 passengers on the train, whose driver discovered the damaged track, were injured. The Internal Security Agency is cooperating with the police, the prosecutor’s office and the railway services in the investigation, said its head, Minister Tomasz Szymoniak.
But the Kremlin has kept its eye on the sabotage, although the incident that occurred on Sunday near the town of Mika, about 100 kilometers southeast of the capital, is under investigation and the government remains wary. Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk even asked residents not to automatically blame Russia for every such incident, which has accumulated in Poland in recent years. “Russia is not so strong as to cause every fire, every situation of this kind,” he told the Polsat network, although he added that Moscow’s involvement “cannot be ruled out.”
Former Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz and MEP from the Tusk Civic Platform party took direct aim at Russia in an interview on the private channel TVN24 on Sunday. He stressed that this sabotage “may indicate a new form of hybrid war between Russia and Poland.” “Not a month goes by without Russia committing some kind of aggression against people recruited by the Russian security services,” Sienkiewicz said.
NATO is monitoring the situation closely. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said, after receiving Finnish President Alexander Stubb at NATO headquarters: “We are in close contact with the Polish authorities. Contact is intense, but we must now wait for the outcome of the investigation.” Reported by Sylvia Ayuso.
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 PiS, and the current government, Tusk’s liberal coalition, place defense as a priority. Poland, convinced that its country, for historical and geographical reasons, is one of the countries most exposed to the Russian threat, leads NATO military spending and aspires to invest 5% of GDP in this area in 2026.
As the media remembers Notes from PolandIn 2023, authorities arrested 16 members of a group acting on behalf of Russia that planned, among other actions, to attack trains carrying aid to Ukraine with explosives. In recent years, a large number of acts of sabotage have also been recorded, including arson, cyber attacks and other acts classified as hybrid attacks that are difficult to attribute, but the most serious recent incident clearly attributed to Russia was the intrusion into its territory of about two dozen drones, which Moscow is using to attack Ukraine, in September.
Tusk does not miss the opportunity to point out that the country is living in the 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 Kokula, said on Sunday in a radio interview that “the enemy is preparing for war.” He continued: “They are creating an environment here whose goal is to create favorable conditions for possible aggression on Polish territory.”
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