Polish PM Donald Tusk confirms recent railway sabotage was carried out by two Ukrainian citizens acting on orders from Russia

Polish authorities suspect Russia of organizing an incident of railway sabotage that was carried out on Nov. 16. According to a report from Polsat News, Prime Minister Donald Tusk informed the country’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm, that the identities of two suspects in the railway sabotage have been established. Tusk said they are Ukrainian citizens who were acting on orders from Russia, and that they entered Poland from Belarus.

The suspects “had been working with Russian intelligence for a long time,” according to the Polish leader.

“The individuals we suspect, one of them, was convicted by a court in Lviv in May of this year, a Ukrainian citizen. He was convicted of acts of sabotage in Ukraine and resides in Belarus. The other is a resident of Donbas. He also crossed from Belarus to Poland with the first suspect this fall, just before the attacks,” the PM explained.

Polish outlet Onet also cited a statement from Jacek Dobrzyński, the country’s spokesman for the Minister Coordinator for Special Services, who said:

“The [special] services are working. Officers with the Internal Security Agency (ABW) are securing evidence, gathering information, and verifying the information they've gathered so far. The principals [of these acts of sabotage], and everything points to them being Russian special services, would very much like to know where the proceedings are headed, what strings our officers are pulling, [and] which threads they're trying to trace.”

Dobrzyński also urged journalists to be more cautious when working with information from unverified sources, saying it may turn out to be “typical Russian disinformation.” The spokesman added that “Russian services want to disrupt our society, to scare us. I assure you that our officers are keeping an eye on this matter and will fully investigate it.”

Poland has introduced the second of four terrorism alert levels, and some rail lines have been placed under the third level at the request of the head of the Internal Security Agency and the interior minister. The investigation remains ongoing.

A meeting of the government’s National Security Committee, previously announced by Tusk, was held Nov. 18 to discuss the railway sabotage.

Damage to railway tracks was discovered Nov. 16 on the Warsaw-Lublin line near the village of Mika, about 100 kilometers from Warsaw. The line was used to transport supplies to Ukraine.

After checking a report from a train driver who had to stop due to the situation on the tracks, law enforcement agencies concluded that the rails had been damaged by an explosion. Police later found a second explosive device nearby that had not detonated.

“The outcome could have been a serious disaster with victims,” Tusk told MPs. He described the attempts at sabotaging the line, cited by Onet in a separate report:

“The first act involved installing a steel clamp on the track, which was intended to derail the train. The incident was to be recorded on a phone with a power bank placed nearby… [In] the second incident… a military-grade C4 explosive charge was detonated using an initiating device, via a 300-meter-long electrical cable.”

Onet also reported that another incident occurred the same day: an overhead line was damaged in the area of the city of Puławy. It is not known whether that incident was also the result of sabotage.