“Saboteurs may try to set fire to control and relay cabinets or other electrical equipment, as well as remotely interfere with the operation of railway traffic-control points. For this, Russia can deploy hackers, who are extremely difficult to trace,” says national-security expert and retired officer of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), Ivan Stupak, in an interview with Niezalezna.pl.
Recently there was Russian sabotage on Polish railways. In your view, how often might Russian saboteurs use this type of attack going forward?
It depends on what tasks the Russian Federation assigns to its saboteurs. I do not rule out that we will continue to see attempts to blow up railway tracks.
Saboteurs may try to set fire to control and relay cabinets or other electrical-power devices, as well as remotely interfere with the work of railway traffic-control points. For this purpose, Russia may involve hackers, who are very difficult to track down.
What are the main ways to prevent this type of attack?
When it comes to the physical protection of facilities, one can do as the Russians and Belarusians did themselves to protect their railway infrastructure—setting up ambushes near control and relay cabinets or railway switch mechanisms. Security services can discreetly, in civilian clothing, guard facilities that may become targets for saboteurs. They can deploy drones to observe from the air who is approaching the tracks and detain them.
What type of sabotage do such actions as blowing up railways fall under?
It is difficult for me to assign these sabotage incidents in Poland to a specific category. In this case, it is crucial to establish who the perpetrator is and who ordered the attack; what type of explosives were used, and what their destructive capacity is. The fact that the explosives found were made from simple and inexpensive materials is just one aspect. When dealing with professional military perpetrators, it is necessary to determine which military unit they come from.
If it turns out that the explosive device originated in Poland, law-enforcement officers must determine who exactly handed it over or sold it to whom, and under what conditions. If it is of foreign origin, they must identify the supply channels for that specific device and possible future shipments. I do not rule out that the device could have entered Polish territory via balloons flown from Belarus. But again—law-enforcement officers must establish this.
Acts of sabotage in Poland
On Sunday morning, a tragedy was narrowly avoided on the Warsaw–Dęblin railway line. The train driver braked just in time before reaching a large gap in the tracks. A day earlier, police had received a report of an explosion in that area. A second dangerous incident occurred on Sunday evening. Between the Puławy Azoty and Puławy Chemia stations, a train traveling from Świnoujście to Rzeszów with nearly 500 passengers was forced to make an emergency stop. The reason was a loss of traction on a section of the railway line.