By Pawel Florkiewicz
WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland and Romania detained eight people suspected of planning sabotage on behalf of Russia, authorities in Warsaw said on Tuesday, with three arrests concerning an alleged new plan to send exploding parcels, this time to Ukraine.
European officials have previously blamed Russia for detonations of parcels carried by DHL and DPD in Europe in 2024, in what security services said was part of a test run for a Russian plot to trigger explosions on cargo flights to the United States. Russia has denied having any such plans.
Poland says it has been targeted with tactics such as arson and cyberattacks in a “hybrid war” waged by Russia to destabilise nations that support Kyiv in the Russian war in Ukraine. Moscow has denied such accusations.
“Preliminary information indicates that they created a route of some kind to send explosives through Poland and Romania to Ukraine,” Jacek Dobrzynski, spokesman for Poland’s Special Services Coordinator, told reporters.
“One of them, a 21-year-old Ukrainian, was detained here in Poland near Warsaw. His colleagues, who were traveling to Romania, were detained by the Romanian special services in Bucharest.”
The Polish National Prosecutor’s Office said the shipments were supposed to spontaneously combust or explode during transport, and that the objective of the planned actions was to intimidate the population and destabilise European Union countries supporting Ukraine.
The Romanian anti-organised crime prosecuting unit DIICOT confirmed that on October 16, two Ukrainian citizens were detained on suspicion of attempting acts of sabotage.
DIICOT prosecutors said that on October 15 the two suspects left two packages containing homemade devices at an international delivery company with the intent of destroying the building through fire.
“The devices were dismantled by specialists. They (suspects) are currently detained for 30 days,” the DIICOT prosecutors said in a statement.
Romania’s intelligence agency SRI said authorities “have prevented new sabotage acts on national territory by two Ukrainian citizens under direct coordination of some representatives of Russian secret services, their aim being to destroy by fire an office of NOVA POST company in Bucharest”.
Dobrzynski also said that in recent months the Internal Security Agency has detained a total of 55 people who acted to the detriment of Poland and on behalf of Russian intelligence.
(Reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz and Karol Badohal in Warsaw, Luiza Ilie in Bucharest; editing by Frances Kerry and Mark Heinrich)
