Ukrainians working for Russia were behind rail blasts, says Polish PM

Polish authorities have identified two Ukrainian men, allegedly working for the Russian intelligence services, as the key suspects in two cases of rail sabotage, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said.

The men are alleged to have planted a military-grade explosive device and attached a steel clamp to rail tracks in two incidents on a strategic rail route used for aid deliveries for Ukraine.

The explosive went off on Saturday night under a freight train, which suffered minor damage to its undercarriage, and damaged the tracks, posing a risk to other trains taking that route, Tusk said.

Speaking in the Polish parliament on Tuesday, Tusk said the two incidents were “unprecedented” and “perhaps the most serious, when it comes to the security of the Polish state, situation since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on Ukraine”.

“We are dealing with an act of sabotage, the consequence of which could have been – and here the perpetrators’ mistake also helped us – … a serious catastrophe with casualties. That is why I am saying that a certain line has been crossed,” he said.

“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.

He said that they were part of a broader pattern of “acts of sabotage and actions of Russian services across the whole of Europe, not only in Poland, [which] are unfortunately gaining momentum”.

The suspects, whose identities are known to Polish authorities but have not been made public, are thought to have arrived in Poland from Belarus shortly before the attacks and returned to Belarus shortly after.

One of the two men had previously been convicted for sabotage in Ukraine, and the other came from the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine, Tusk said.

The prime minister said the recruitment of Ukrainian citizens by Russia served to “stir up possibly radically anti-Ukrainian sentiments”, which he said were “particularly dangerous” in countries like Poland, which host large Ukrainian migrant and refugee communities.

The claim that the suspects fled to Belarus came just a day after Poland opened two border crossings with the country that had been shut for years due to political tensions. Poland cited economic reasons for opening the checkpoints.

At the Bobrowniki crossing on Tuesday, several dozen trucks were waiting on the Polish side to cross into Belarus.

Poland has suffered a wave of sabotage attempts and cyber-attacks in recent months, with authorities in the country usually blaming Russia. Polish authorities had detained 55 people in relation to such offences, Tusk said, with 23 arrested for acts of sabotage.

Court files seen by the Guardian have shown that the perpetrators are often recruited on the secure messaging app Telegram by accounts believed to be operated by Russian intelligence, which promise them money for carrying out arson or other tasks.

After hundreds of Russian spies operating under diplomatic cover were expelled from Europe after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it is believed that Russia increasingly turned to this kind of “one-time” operative.

The Russian services also use the tactic in Ukraine, where teenagers have been recruited as unwitting suicide bombers, paid to carry packages with explosives which are then remotely detonated when the courier is close to a police station or other sensitive site.

However, the nebulous chain of command for such attacks and the difficulty of working out who exactly is on the end of the Telegram chat has often made it difficult to prove beyond doubt that Russia is involved.

In the case of this week’s attacks, authorities have not yet explained what evidence they have gathered to support their claim that Russia is responsible for the attack.

Poland is understood to be working on strong diplomatic reactions to Belarus and Russia, with the foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, saying he would demand that the countries work with Polish authorities and surrender the suspects.

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the accusations and said they were just an another example of Poland’s “Russophobia”.