Highly classified information from the investigation into the railway sabotage in Poland has leaked to the press. Rzeczpospolita wrote that a fingerprint belonging to one of the saboteurs was found at the scene. Prof. Sławomir Cenckiewicz stated that “launching” such information into the public domain is an extremely irresponsible act by someone within the security services or the prosecutor’s office. “You can be certain that from now on all Russian or Belarusian operators will work in gloves,” the head of the National Security Bureau (BBN) said on Telewizja Republika.
Helping the enemy plan further operations
The remarks refer to Rzeczpospolita’s Tuesday afternoon article: “We know what gave away the saboteurs who blew up the tracks. New findings by Rzeczpospolita”. Journalists Izabela Kacprzak and Grażyna Zawadka reported that investigators found a SIM card and the fingerprint of one of the perpetrators at the site of the act of sabotage near a train station.
Prof. Cenckiewicz, head of the National Security Bureau, did not hold back in criticizing the leak. “Information from a ‘double-zero’ proceeding, strictly classified, was passed to the press,” he emphasized at the beginning of his interview with Michał Rachoń on Telewizja Republika.
“Yesterday after 5 p.m., a very important text appeared on the Rzeczpospolita website. Someone acted with extreme irresponsibility in handing that over to the media — whether from among investigators or from the prosecutor’s office. The article states that one of the perpetrators left fingerprints on devices (SIM cards or a power bank). One can be certain that from now on all Russian or Belarusian operators will be working in gloves,” Cenckiewicz said.
How did the saboteurs enter Poland?
The BBN chief broadly criticized the actions of the services and the government’s communication. “Some operators entered Polish territory, carried out an operation, and then left the country — that is the sad result.” But how did they manage to enter Poland at all, given that these individuals should have been on the radar of the security services?
“If we assume they arrived officially, we can even debate to what extent this was not just a Border Guard failure, but a failure of the informational databases available to the Republic of Poland to effectively verify incoming individuals. Was information such as one having worked in the Donbas prosecutor’s office or the other having had a run-in with the law in Ukraine readily available? It seems such information wasn’t available — assuming they traveled under their real names and not under ‘legalized’ identities,” Cenckiewicz said.
In his view, the moment Polish investigators collect fingerprints is the moment they must immediately request identification assistance from allied services. “That may be the moment when such an operator is identified — not necessarily their moment of crossing the border. Because they may be traveling with legalized papers,” he stressed again. And this is precisely why publicly revealing that Poland has the fingerprints is so damaging.
According to the BBN chief, “the night from Saturday to Sunday was slept through far too comfortably” by both services and ministers, and the next day too little was done. “It looked bad. For the second time we have botched crisis communication handling. And the fact that these operators calmly left the country after completing the mission — that is catastrophic,” he told Michał Rachoń.
Where exactly were mistakes made?
Cenckiewicz did not stop at general criticism but pointed to specific failures. “For years we were fed the nonsense that catching a spy is a counterintelligence failure. Well, this is a counterintelligence failure. They came, they carried out the operation,” he said.
Commenting on the government’s official request to Russia and Belarus to hand over the operators, he added: “That’s not how it’s done — it ridicules Poland.” Donald Tusk had announced that he would “immediately instruct the appropriate minister” to issue such a request. Cenckiewicz also recalled that the same rhetoric (“we’ll get him,” “we’re on the trail”) appeared in media coverage of the hunt for the killer of Polish soldier Mateusz Sitek.
In his view, there should have been immediate information flow between the police and the civilian counterintelligence service. Then a rapid decision on next steps should have followed.
“Operational memory suggests that at least since early spring 2023, we have been dealing with long-range reconnaissance of railway infrastructure by the FSB and GRU. Probably earlier, but that is when they were first detected by the services,” the BBN chief recalled.
A whole group was captured then, and 13 people were charged, causing the network to cease operating. “Ad-hoc recruitment via communication systems. The same method: surveillance plus detonation of an explosive. The modus operandi is known,” he said, adding that this past experience should have automatically triggered immediate police notification of the security services. In his view, regardless of it being nighttime, investigators should have been sent to the site immediately if residents reported an explosion near railway tracks.