CLAUDIA CIOBANU
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Two Ukrainian citizens working for Russia are suspected of bombing a railway line in Poland over the weekend, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday.
Speaking before the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, Tusk said that the two suspects had long collaborated with Russian intelligence services. He said their identities were known but could not be released to the public due to the ongoing investigation. According to him, the couple had already left Poland and left through the Terespol border crossing into Belarus.
Tusk called the weekend explosion on a railway line linking the Polish capital Warsaw to the border with Ukraine an “unprecedented act of sabotage.”
In a separate incident, which Polish officials have now also confirmed was sabotage, power lines on another section of the same railway line further south were also damaged.
Asked to comment on Polish claims that two Ukrainian citizens working for Russia committed sabotage on a railway line, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would be “strange if they didn’t blame Russia first.”
“Russia is accused of all forms of hybrid and direct war taking place in Poland,” Peskov told Russian media on Tuesday. “In this regard, Russophobia, of course, is in full bloom.”
Western officials accused Russia and its proxies of organizing dozens of attacks and other incidents throughout Europe since invasion of Ukraine More than three years ago, according to data compiled by the AP. Moscow's goal, Western officials say, is to undermine support for Ukraine, create fear and divide European societies.
Earlier on Tuesday, a meeting of the government's national security committee was held in Warsaw with the participation of the military command, heads of intelligence services and a presidential representative.
Army patrols were sent to check the security of railways and other key infrastructure in the east of the country, the defense minister said.
The Polish prosecutor's office has launched an investigation into “sabotage of a terrorist nature” directed against railway infrastructure and committed in the interests of foreign intelligence.
“These actions created an immediate threat of a ground transportation disaster, threatening the lives and health of many people and property on a large scale,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
In the first incident, an explosion damaged tracks near the village of Mika, about 60 miles southeast of Warsaw. In a separate incident, power lines were destroyed in the Pulaw region, about 30 miles from Lublin. Trains carrying passengers were forced to stop at both locations, but no one was injured.
“Most likely the purpose of the explosion was to blow up the train,” Tusk said on Monday, referring to the Mika incident.
The damage caused in both places has been repaired.
Katie Marie Davis contributed from Manchester, England.
