Poland has identified two Ukrainian nationals working for Russian intelligence services, as the key suspects on the rail sabotage incidents over the weekend.
The men are accused of planting a military-type C-4 explosive intended to blow up a train and attaching a steel clamp to rail tracks in separate incidents in the village of Mika in central Poland. The explosion at the freight train caused minor damage to a wagon floor and was captured on CCTV. The earlier attempt to derail the train by placing a steel clamp on the rail had failed, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday while addressing the parliament.
One of the suspects lived in Belarus and the other was the resident of eastern Ukraine and both had crossed into Poland from Belarus close to the Ukrainian border.
Tusk described the two sabotage acts as “unprecedented” and “perhaps the most serious, when it comes to the security of the Polish state, incidents since the start of the full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.” Tusk said the attack was aimed at “causing a rail catastrophe”. “In both cases we are sure that the attempt to blow up the rails and the railway infrastructure violation were intentional and their aim was to cause a railway catastrophe,” he said.
Tusk did not reveal the names of the suspects as it would complicate the investigation. In response to the attack, while also stressing that Warsaw will raise the threat level to protect selected rail routes, but it will stay unchanged in the rest of the country.
Russia denied any involvement in the sabotage act in Poland, with the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, describing such accusations as another example of Warsaw’s “Russophobia”.
