Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called this weekend’s explosion on a Polish rail line near the Ukrainian border an “unprecedented act of sabotage.”
An explosive device damaged track sections of a rail line connecting Warsaw to Lublin, causing a passenger train to come to an emergency stop on Sunday.
Tusk said the rail line is used to deliver aid to Ukraine, but did not specify any suspected perpetrator of the incident.
“Blowing up the rail track on the Warsaw-Lublin route is an unprecedented act of sabotage targeting directly the security of the Polish state and its civilians. This route is also crucially important for delivering aid to Ukraine. We will catch the perpetrators, whoever they are,” Tusk said.
There were no casualties, but the damage “created an immediate danger,” and posed a significant threat to “the life and health of many people” if a train had reached the breaks in the tracks at full speed, said the Polish National Prosecutor’s Office.
The Polish National Prosecutor’s Office announced that it initiated an investigation into the incident early Monday morning. The office wrote in the release that the investigation concerns “acts of sabotage of a terrorist nature, aimed at railway infrastructure and committed for the benefit of foreign intelligence against the Republic of Poland.”
EUROPEAN LEADERS WARN RUSSIAN DIRECT AND HYBRID WARFARE IS INTENSIFYING
The incident comes as Europe has raised alarm bells about fielding “hybrid warfare” incidents from Russia, with suspected Russian drones having flown above the airspace of NATO member countries.
“The threats to our security are real and growing. Europe must urgently boost capacity to protect our skies and our infrastructure. Poland is the largest defence spender in Europe. And it will be the biggest beneficiary of the SAFE instrument,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a statement.
