# Poland investigates rail damage after Tusk says two Ukrainians worked for Russia
Poland has opened a broad security response after two separate incidents on the Warsaw-Lublin rail corridor were described by Prime Minister Donald Tusk as acts of sabotage linked to Russian intelligence. Tusk told parliament that the suspects were two Ukrainian citizens who had long worked for Russia and had entered Poland from Belarus before returning there after the incidents.
The case has drawn attention because the line serves a route that is important both for domestic transport and for assistance moving toward Ukraine. Tusk said the goal was to cause a rail catastrophe. He also said one suspect had previously been convicted in absentia in Ukraine for sabotage-related activity.
The first incident took place near the village of Mika, south-east of Warsaw, on 15 November. Tusk said a military-grade C4 explosive device was detonated around 21:00 local time as a freight train passed. The blast caused only minor damage to a wagon floor, and the driver did not notice the explosion. CCTV captured the scene. Tusk also said an earlier attempt to derail a train using a steel clamp on the rail had failed.
A second incident followed on 17 November near Puławy, when damage to overhead cables forced a passenger train carrying 475 people to brake suddenly. Polish officials initially said there was a very high chance the attacks were ordered by a foreign service. A spokesman for the minister responsible for special services later said that everything pointed to Russian special services.
Tusk said he would order a higher alert level on certain rail lines. He said 55 people had been detained since the start of last year on suspicion of assisting, preparing or carrying out sabotage, and 23 had been remanded in custody. He said the current cases were being handled carefully because naming suspects could complicate the operation.
Moscow dismissed the suggestion that it was behind the attacks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was being blamed first and complained that Moscow is regularly accused of hybrid and direct war in Poland. Tusk, meanwhile, said Russia’s interest was not only any immediate damage but also the wider effect on public confidence. In his telling, the aim was to create panic, uncertainty and political division, including anti-Ukrainian sentiment in a country hosting more than a million Ukrainian war refugees.
The incidents come at a time when Poland’s rail system has become strategically important for aid deliveries into Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. They also fit a wider pattern of drone and security incidents that have sharpened Polish concern over Russian pressure on Nato’s eastern flank.
For now, the Polish response is focused on investigation, alert levels and public reassurance. But the political message from the prime minister was more pointed: he said the country faced a deliberate attempt to destabilise a vital transport corridor and to turn a railway incident into a wider psychological operation.
