By CLAUDIA CIOBANU
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Two Ukrainian citizens working for Russia are suspected of blowing up a railway line in Poland over the weekend, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday.
Speaking to the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, Tusk said the two suspects had been collaborating with the Russian secret services for a long time. He said their identities were known but could not be revealed to the public because of ongoing investigations. The pair have already left Poland, exiting via the Terespol border crossing to Belarus, he said.
Tusk has described the weekend explosion on a rail line linking Poland’s capital, Warsaw, to the border with Ukraine as an “unprecedented act of sabotage.”
In a separate incident, which Polish officials also now confirm as sabotage, power lines over another segment of the same rail line further south were also damaged.
When asked to comment on Polish statements saying that two Ukrainian nationals working for Russia had sabotaged a railway line, presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it would be “strange if Russia wasn’t blamed first.”
“Russia is accused of all forms of hybrid and direct warfare taking place in Poland,” Peskov told Russian media Tuesday. “In this regard, Russophobia is, of course, in full bloom.”
Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, according to data collected by the AP. Moscow’s goal, Western officials say, is to undermine support for Ukraine, spark fear and divide European societies.
A meeting of the governmental National Security Committee took place in Warsaw earlier Tuesday with the participation of military commanders, heads of the intelligence services and a representative of the president.
Army patrols have been sent to check the safety of railways and other key infrastructure in the east of the country, the defense minister said.
Polish prosecutors have initiated an investigation into “acts of sabotage of a terrorist nature” directed against railway infrastructure and committed for the benefit of foreign intelligence.
“These actions brought about an immediate danger of a land traffic disaster, threatening the lives and health of many people and property on a large scale,” prosecutors said in a statement.
In the first incident, an explosion damaged the tracks near the village of Mika, about 60 miles southeast of Warsaw. In a separate incident, power lines were destroyed in the area of Puławy, about 30 miles from Lublin. Trains carrying passengers were forced to stop at both locations, but no one was hurt.
“The explosion was most likely intended to blow up the train,” Tusk said on Monday in reference to the Mika incident.
The damage caused at both locations has been repaired.
Katie Marie Davies contributed from Manchester, England.
