Blown-up rail line links Warsaw to Lublin and Ukraine - where it has been used to deliver aid

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said a rail line blast was sabotage. Photo / Polish Prime Minister's office handout via AFP

A rail line in Poland was blown up yesterday in “an unprecedented act of sabotage”, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said today, vowing to “catch the perpetrators”.

The affected line links the capital of Warsaw to the eastern city of Lublin and continues onward to Ukraine.

It has been used to deliver aid to that country.

Without specifically accusing Russia, Tusk connected the apparent attack to the war in Ukraine.

“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,” Tusk wrote on X.

“This route is also crucially important for delivering aid to Ukraine. We will catch the perpetrators, whoever they are.”

Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s Security Services Minister, said today that there was a “very high” chance the sabotage had been carried out on the orders of a foreign intelligence service. Siemoniak did not name a specific country.

A train driver spotted damage to the line, and no casualties were reported, according to Polish officials. An investigation is under way, Tusk said.

Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X that the Polish military will inspect a roughly 120km section of the rail line running to the Ukrainian border.

A wave of sabotage and other attacks in Europe have been connected to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Last month, Poland detained eight people who Tusk said were “preparing acts of sabotage” in Eastern Europe.

Polish officials have accused Russia of targeting Poland in a “hybrid war” that includes arson and cyberattacks. Russia has denied the allegations.

In September, a Ukrainian man suspected of a role in the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was arrested in Poland - a month after another Ukrainian suspected in the case was arrested in Italy.

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