Poland is blaming Russia for an arson attack on a Starlink satellite station in September and two Turkish citizens have been arrested in connection with the suspected act of sabotage, reports the AP. The suspects, whose names were not released in line with Polish privacy rules, were arrested in Germany, Polish officials said Monday. They are accused of deliberately setting fire to Starlink infrastructure on Sept. 23 in Wola Krobowska, Poland, about 25 miles south of Warsaw. “We have no doubt that Russian intelligence services are behind this act of sabotage,” said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services, noting that Russian intelligence services are increasingly turning to people with ties to the criminal underworld. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a post on X, called the incident “another act of hybrid warfare.”
The arson in September was one of more than 210 incidents across Europe that Western officials consider sabotage and destructive activity linked to Russia tracked by the AP since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Officials say the attacks are meant to undermine support for Ukraine, spread fear and discord in European societies, and drain investigative resources. Russia often uses proxies for such attacks and some perpetrators say they have no idea they have been hired by Moscow. Russia’s intelligence services are carrying out almost “daily acts of subversion,” Siemoniak said Tuesday in Warsaw. “There is not a week where activities do not happen,” and the same goes for other European countries, he said, adding that the activity is aimed at countries that support Ukraine.
He said Russia’s covert malign activity in Poland started in early 2024 as Russia recruited disposable agents on platforms like Telegram to carry out attacks, including against a shopping center. “Our enemy—that is Russia’s intelligence services—changes its methods of operation and has unlimited resources,” Siemoniak said. Fighting against Russia’s intelligence services is not like taking down an organized crime group where the group is convicted and the case is closed, he said. “In cases of the subversive activity, it’s like the story of the dragon whose heads keep growing and you never know which direction they pursue next,” says Beate Gangås, Norway’s director-general of the Police Security Service. “We are in the most serious situation since the Second World War.”