Investigators found a bottle containing a flammable liquid, resembling a Molotov cocktail, next to the distribution board at the station in the village of Wola Krobowska in the Mazovian Voivodeship, RMF24 reported. The fire broke out on the evening of September 23 at the facility, located less than 50 kilometers from Warsaw.
The blaze destroyed the distribution board to which the antennas are connected and also spread to an electrical substation and a generator. The State Fire Service, police and prosecutors are conducting a review, and the Internal Security Agency and the Central Bureau of Investigation of Police have been notified of the incident.
The station is operated by Exatel, a Polish state telecommunications company that provides communications services across Poland and in Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said the station serves as a hub that, among other things, helps ensure the security of internet operations in Ukraine, and could have been deliberately disabled to cut the connection and deprive various agencies, including the Ukrainian military, of network access.
Gawkowski said the station could not be put out of action and that the system is operating normally. According to him, a shutdown of such facilities could disrupt internet access and potentially affect the operation of ATM networks in the country.
There is no direct evidence of Russian involvement in the arson, Gawkowski noted, but he said what happened is consistent with a new Russian doctrine of conducting attacks. Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk said that wherever suspicious arson attacks occur, possible sabotage or subversion should be assumed by default. According to him, Russia uses fairly simple methods, carrying out arson and acts of sabotage and provoking social instability across Europe.
Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said it is hard to imagine that everything in such cases happens by accident, and that Russia has reached a new level of hybrid war with all of Europe. Gawkowski, for his part, called the incident an element of hybrid war, referring to a recent statement by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
A day earlier, Polish police reported an attempt to cause a railway accident. Near the settlement of Jedlanka in the Łuków County, two freight trains traveling in opposite directions struck concrete blocks that someone had placed on the tracks. The trains did not derail and no one was injured. The day before, the Polish military reported that a Russian Mi-8 helicopter had entered the country's airspace, flying in from the Kaliningrad Region for 42 seconds, prompting the command to scramble fighter jets.
Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland has been on heightened alert for possible sabotage. At the end of August, a plant of the Polish defense company WB Electronics, which works actively with Ukraine, caught fire. Earlier, defense industry facilities were attacked in a number of European countries: in August there was an attempted drone attack on a Ukrainian An-124 cargo aircraft at Leipzig Airport, an arson attack on the building of the defense company Milrem Robotics in Tallinn, and an arson attempt was prevented at a plant of the Ukrainian drone manufacturer Skyeton in Slovakia. Media outlets, citing intelligence officials, reported that Russia is behind the series of attacks, recruiting members of local criminal groups.