By Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Pawel Florkiewicz
WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland has identified two people responsible for an explosion on a railway route to Ukraine, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, adding that they were Ukrainians who collaborated with Russian intelligence and that they had fled to Belarus.
The blast on the Warsaw-Lublin line, which connects the Polish capital to the Ukrainian border, followed a wave of arson, sabotage and cyberattacks in Poland and other European countries since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Warsaw has said Poland has become one of Moscow’s biggest targets due to its role as a hub for aid to Kyiv.
“The most important information is that… we have identified the people responsible for the acts of sabotage,” Tusk told lawmakers, adding that they were Ukrainians who had collaborated with Russian intelligence for “a long time”.
“In both cases we are sure that the attempt to blow up the rails and the railway infrastructure violation were intentional and their aim was to cause a railway traffic catastrophe,” he said.
EXPLOSION ON THE TRACKS
Russia has repeatedly denied being responsible for acts of sabotage and on Tuesday the Kremlin dismissed accusations of involvement
“Russia is accused of all manifestations of the hybrid and direct war that is taking place,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian state television reporter.
“In Poland, let’s say, everyone is trying to run ahead of the European locomotive in this regard. And Russophobia, of course, is flourishing there.”
In the first incident in the village of Mika, an explosive device was detonated on the track as a freight train was passing using a device connected to it by a 300-metre-long cable. A certain amount of explosive that did not detonate was recovered at the scene, Tusk said.
He said that other trains had gone over the affected piece of track before one stopped.
In a second incident near Pulawy, a steel clamp was installed on the track with the likely aim of derailing the train, Tusk said. He added that a mobile phone attached to a power bank had been set up nearby in order to record what happened.
He added that one of the suspects had already been found guilty by a court in Lviv for taking part in sabotage in Ukraine, but had not been imprisoned as he was in Belarus.
“Poland is in constant contact with the intelligence services of allied countries, and we will do everything we can to pursue these individuals,” Tusk said.
(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Conor Humphries and Ros Russell)
