Several arrested in Poland over railway sabotage, state media says

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish authorities have arrested several people in connection with a blast that damaged a rail line linking Warsaw to the Ukrainian border over the weekend, state media reported Wednesday.

Jacek Dobrzyński, the spokesman for Poland’s secret services minister, said the suspects were being questioned but did not provide details on how many were detained, according to the Polish Press Agency, or PAP.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has described the explosion as an “unprecedented act of sabotage.” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said it was “an act of state terror.”

The blast damaged tracks near Mika, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Warsaw. No one was hurt.

In a separate weekend incident, power lines were destroyed in the area of Puławy, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Lublin in eastern Poland.

On Tuesday, Tusk told the Polish parliament that authorities suspect two Ukrainian citizens of blowing up the rail line. He alleged that the suspects had been collaborating with the Russian secret services for a long time. He said their identities were known but could not be revealed to the public because of the ongoing investigation, and that the pair had already left Poland, crossing into Belarus.

Sikorski said Wednesday that he will order the closure of the last Russian consulate still operating in the country in response to the attack.

“In connection with this, though it will not be our full response, I have decided to withdraw consent for the operation of the last Russian consulate in Gdansk,” he said.

Two other consulates, in Krakow and Poznan, had been closed in recent years. The Russian embassy in Warsaw remains open.

In response, Moscow will “reduce Poland’s diplomatic and consular presence in Russia,” the state news agency RIA Novosti cited Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.

Asked about Sikorski’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia’s “relations with Poland have deteriorated completely.”

“This is probably a manifestation of this degradation, of the desire of the Polish authorities to reduce to zero any possibility of consular or diplomatic ties. In this case, one can only express regret,” Peskov told reporters during his daily conference call.

Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, according to data collected by The Associated Press. Moscow’s goal, Western officials say, is to undermine support for Ukraine, spark fear and divide European societies.