Poland is closing the final remaining Russian consulate in response to a “false flag… act of state terrorism” which saw a strategic railway used to supply Ukraine with war materiel bombed by saboteurs at the weekend.
Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski — who has long been extremely hawkish on Russia, as many in Poland are — announced the country would be sending a diplomatic note to the Russian Federation on Wednesday morning withdrawing consent for its final operating consulate. Poland has gradually been closing Russian consulates in recent years in response to alleged Russian state-sponsored terror attacks against Poland, and until today the only remaining diplomatic outposts are a consulate in the northern port city of Gdansk, and the Russian embassy in Warsaw.
Poland says it doesn’t intend to close the embassy as it wants to keep diplomatic channels to Moscow open.
UPDATE 1500: Arrests Made
Polish security services spokesman Jacek Dobrzyński says some “persons” have been arrested in the course of the investigation into the railway sabotage bombings. “Intensive” operations are ongoing to secure and analyse further evidence over the attacks, he’d said. The Polish authorities haven’t specified who those arrested are, but they are unlikely to be the main suspects, given they managed to flee to unfriendly Belarus, who presumably won’t be paying too much heed to requests for extradition.
Meanwhile Poland’s politics is responding to the Foreign Minister’s intemperate rant in the national parliament, where he got side-tracked from Russian sabotage and spent time attacking Poland’s right-wing opposition, and the President as well. A spokesman for the President, Marcin Przydacz, has now criticised Sikorski for his remarks.
He is reported to have said the FM should “come to his senses” and stop letting himself be ruled by his emotions. Noting Sikorski has tried and failed to run for the office of the President in the past, Przydacz said: “What is the Polish government minister doing in this situation? He’s not attacking Russia, but the Polish president. This is an absolutely unacceptable situation”.
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Addressing the Polish parliament on Wednesday morning, FM Sikorski said: “As you know, in recent days, foreign intelligence agencies have acted, [which could have potentially] resulted in the deaths of many people… This time, it was not just an act of sabotage, as before, but an act of state terrorism, as the clear intention was to cause human casualties”.
PolsatNews reported Sikorski stated it had become routine for Russia’s intelligence agencies to recruit “subcontractor” agents in European countries to carry out ‘false flag dirty work’, and this instance where two Ukrainian citizens are suspected to have bombed the Polish railway supplying Ukraine with weapons may be an instance of this.
This attack “will be met with our response, and not just a diplomatic one”, Sikorski assured.
Sikorski’s address also veered off into nakedly political territory, and he spent time bitterly attacking the Polish conservative opposition, Law and Justice (PiS). Ranting against Poles who express Eurosceptic views, Sikorski accused the Polish right of being sympathetic to Russia and of causing harm to their home country by not being aligned with the priorities of the present centrist-globalist government.
The Foreign Minister even harangued the Polish President, a conservative Eurosceptic, and blasted his planned forthcoming trip to Hungary. PiS lawmakers walked out of the chamber in protest during Sikorski’s rant, the second time they have done so in two days.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the attacks on the strategic Polish railway used for NATO defence continues. As reported on Monday, two Ukrainian citizens are said to have been identified as the key suspects in perhaps two separate explosives attacks on the Warsaw-Lublin railway line, which in at least one case caused the track to be severed.
Yet no injuries or derailments were caused and security services believe the attack, which used potent C4 explosives, may have been botched. Both suspects were able to flee across the border to Moscow-aligned Belarus before the manhunt for them even began.
Warsaw has said it is requesting the men be extradited from Belarus, but given the country is Europe’s final remaining Soviet style “dictatorship” and is a security client of the Russian Federation, the chances of this request being honoured are minimal.
The actual presumed intent was to blow up rail lines while freight trains crossed over the explosives, it was stated, a tactic already well rehearsed from inside the Ukraine War itself, where partisans frequently lay mines for passing supply trains.
Russia has proven particularly vulnerable to such sabotage and relies heavily on its rail network to bring troops, ammunition, and weapons up to the front line. In response it has re-activatied its fleet of armoured trains to protect these routes.
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