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 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Warsaw.
“We have no doubt that Russian intelligence services are behind this act of sabotage,” Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services, said in a news release, 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.”
Other details were not immediately available.
Officials say one goal of the attacks is 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.
Tech titan Elon Musk has allowed the Ukrainians to use his Starlink satellite communications system inside their own territory, including in Russian-occupied regions, but has restricted use of the satellite system inside Russia. Starlink has become deeply embedded in Ukraine’s military operations, with commanders and soldiers relying on satellite connectivity to communicate and coordinate operations.
Russia’s intelligence services are carrying out almost “daily acts of subversion,” Siemoniak said Tuesday at a security conference 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 the case of subversive activity, as soon as you cut one head off, another grows and “you never know what direction they will pursue next,” 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,” Beate Gangås, Norway’s director-general of the Police Security Service, told the conference. “We are in the most serious situation since the Second World War.”
Dazio reported from Berlin.
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