Two Ukrainian citizens who have long worked for Russian intelligence have been identified as the suspects behind two acts of sabotage on Poland’s rail network, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said.
One of the suspects had already been convicted in absentia of acts of sabotage in Ukraine, Tusk told Poland’s parliament.
On Monday, he visited the scene of an explosion near Mika, south-east of Warsaw, which damaged the railway line leading to the Ukrainian border at the weekend, and called it “an unprecedented act of sabotage”.
Another incident further down the line near Pulawy on Monday forced a packed train to stop suddenly and damage was found to overhead cables.
Polish authorities had initially said there was a very high chance that the two acts of sabotage on the Warsaw-Lublin railway line on had been ordered by a “foreign service”.
Then a spokesman for Poland’s special services minister said on Tuesday that “everything points to them being Russian special services”.
Russia has not yet publicly commented on the allegations.
“The goal was to cause a rail catastrophe,” Tusk told MPs. The Polish prime minister said he would not disclose the names of the two suspects as this could complicate the operation, though he told parliament that one was living in Belarus and the other was a resident of eastern Ukraine.
Both suspects had crossed into Poland from Belarus during the autumn and had now returned there via the border crossing at Terespol in the far south-west of Belarus, close to the Ukrainian border, he added.
Tusk said that a military-grade C4 explosive device detonated on 15 November at about 21:00 local time (20:00 GMT) near the village of Mika.
The explosion, which happened as a freight train was passing, caused minor damage to a wagon floor. It was captured on CCTV.
Tusk said the train driver did not even notice the incident.
Credit: bbc.com
