Prime Minister Donald Tusk said an explosion ripped up a railway track between Warsaw and Lublin in an "unprecedented act of sabotage" against the country’s security.
No one was injured, but the government launched a major investigation and convened an emergency security meeting.
The incident happened over the weekend near the villages of Życzyn and Mika, close to the town of Garwolin, around 100 km southeast of Warsaw.
Early on Sunday, a train driver reported irregularities on the track. Police who arrived at the scene found a section of rail so badly damaged that traffic had to be halted.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited the site on Monday morning.
In a video message, he said investigators were "standing at the place of the explosion not far from Garwolin, near Mika station, an explosion that most likely was meant to blow up a train running on the Warsaw-Dęblin route.”
He added that "fortunately there was no tragedy, but the matter is very serious," and noted that police, the Central Bureau of Police Investigation (CBŚP), prosecutors and explosives experts were working on the scene.
Writing later on the social media platform X, Tusk said the destruction of the track on the Warsaw-Lublin route was "a unprecedented act of sabotage directed against the security of the Polish state and its citizens."
He said an investigation was underway and pledged that, as in previous cases, the authorities would find those responsible "whoever they are."
Tusk announced that the government’s Committee for National Security would hold an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday morning with military commanders, the heads of the security services and a representative of the president.
The line where the explosion occurred is part of a major corridor for military and humanitarian supplies heading toward Ukraine.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński told reporters that over the weekend there had been two confirmed acts of sabotage on the rail network.
One of them, in Mika, had already been formally confirmed by the services.
“Beyond any doubt in this case we can say that there was a detonation of an explosive device which damaged the railway tracks,” he said after a high-level meeting of security officials.
That meeting, held on Monday before noon, brought together Kierwiński, Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek, Special Services Coordinator Tomasz Siemoniak, and the leadership of the main state security agencies.
Kierwiński said investigators had secured extensive evidence, including footage from nearby CCTV cameras.
A special team including representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office, the Central Bureau of Police Investigation and the Internal Security Agency has been set up to handle the rail incidents.
The interior minister also reported that around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, two further events were confirmed on the same line.
In one case, about 60 meters of overhead power line used to supply electricity to trains was damaged.
A few hundred meters away officers found a metal clamp fixed to the tracks.
According to Kierwiński, the clamp had been cut through by passing trains and is now being closely examined, along with the second site.
Justice Minister Żurek said prosecutors had already opened a preparatory investigation, led by the Mazovian branch of the National Public Prosecutor’s Office.
He added that two articles of the Polish Criminal Code are in play: one dealing with sabotage and another covering attempts to cause a disaster in land transport.
He noted that, if sabotage is proven, the offense carries a very high penalty, beginning at 10 years’ imprisonment and including the possibility of life in prison.
Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said the army would inspect about 120 kilometers of track and adjacent infrastructure on the line running east toward the Ukrainian border at Hrubieszów.
In a separate incident on Sunday evening, police in Puławy were called after a long-distance passenger train from Świnoujście to Rzeszów made an emergency stop. The train was carrying 475 passengers.
According to regional police, no one was injured, but several windows in one of the carriages were shattered, most likely because of a damaged power line.
Officers were working at the site under the supervision of the District Prosecutor’s Office in Puławy, together with colleagues from the provincial police headquarters in Lublin, the Central Bureau of Police Investigation and the local branch of the Internal Security Agency.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Monday that he was in contact with the Polish authorities about the explosion and that NATO headquarters was waiting for the results of the investigation.
Security analysts say the incidents fit a wider pattern of hostile “hybrid” actions against Poland.
This term is often used to describe a blend of tools, from cyberattacks and disinformation to sabotage and incidents that look like accidents, used to pressure or destabilize a country without open warfare.
Aleksander Olech, editor-in-chief of the military portal Defence24.com, told Polish state news agency PAP that recent events on the railways "form part of a broader campaign of hybrid pressure against Poland that has been going on for years."
He pointed to a series of earlier incidents as context, including illegal transmission of "radio-stop" signals, which remotely halt trains, mapping of rail routes, installation of GPS devices on trains carrying aid to Ukraine and distributed denial-of-service attacks on operators’ IT systems.
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) is a type of cyberattack that overwhelms internet servers with artificially generated traffic so they cannot function.
In his view, what sets the latest acts of railway sabotage apart is the direct and very real threat to the lives of passengers and railway staff.
Retired navy commander Artur Bilski, head of the Nobilis Media think tank, said the events marked “a very dangerous escalation of the threat of sabotage, not only against railway routes used to move supplies to Ukraine, but also against critical infrastructure.”
He argued that, if the attack is confirmed as foreign-directed, it would signal that Russia has a support base inside Poland capable of carrying out such actions and expanding them, including by exploiting large communities of people who have arrived from beyond Poland’s eastern border.
Polish authorities say their priority is to secure transport routes to Ukraine, strengthen protection of key infrastructure and identify those behind what the prime minister has called an unprecedented attack on the country’s rail network.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP