Poland plans to charge 2 Ukrainians with sabotage of terrorist nature for railway explosion

WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Polish authorities plan to charge two Ukrainians with sabotage of a terrorist nature on behalf of Russia over an explosion that damaged a train track used for deliveries to Ukraine, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Officials said the two suspects left Poland and crossed into Belarus as soon as they committed the weekend attack on a rail line linking Warsaw with the Ukrainian border. Polish authorities allege the two Ukrainians had been collaborating with the Russian secret services for a long time.

Several others have been detained in connection to the railway explosion, prosecutors said on Wednesday. They did not provide more details.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has described the explosion as an “unprecedented act of sabotage.” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said it was “an act of state terror.”

The blast damaged tracks near Mika, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Warsaw. No one was hurt.

In a separate weekend incident, power lines on the same rail track were destroyed in the area of Pulawy, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Lublin in eastern Poland.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that Ukrainian officials also believe the sabotage has a “Russian link.”

“No one except for Russians is interested in this,” Zelenskyy added, after speaking to Tusk.

He said Ukraine would provide Poland with all required information, and that a Polish-Ukrainian working group to prevent Russian sabotage would be created.

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 Associated Press. Moscow’s goal, Western officials say, is to undermine support for Ukraine, spark fear and divide European societies.

The Polish government said on Wednesday it would deploy up to 10,000 soldiers to support the police in defending critical infrastructure across Poland.

Sikorski said Wednesday that he will order the closure of the last Russian consulate still operating in the country in response to the attack.

“In connection with this, though it will not be our full response, I have decided to withdraw consent for the operation of the last Russian consulate in Gdansk,” he said.

Two other consulates, in Krakow and Poznan, had been closed in recent years. The Russian embassy in Warsaw remains open.

In response, Moscow will “reduce Poland’s diplomatic and consular presence in Russia,” the state news agency RIA Novosti cited Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.

Asked about Sikorski’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia’s “relations with Poland have deteriorated completely.”

“This is probably a manifestation of this degradation, of the desire of the Polish authorities to reduce to zero any possibility of consular or diplomatic ties. In this case, one can only express regret,” Peskov told reporters during his daily conference call.

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Geir Moulson in Berlin, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Illia Novikov in Kyiv contributed to this report.