Poland accuses Russia of sabotage at Starlink station near Warsaw

Author, News Department

Place of work, BBC Russian Service

Published 4 minutes ago

Reading time: 4 min

The fire that broke out at a Starlink ground station near Warsaw on Wednesday was the result of sabotage, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said on Thursday.

Gawkowski said on Polish public television that as yet unknown persons set the station on fire to stop its work and thereby deprive “various organizations, including the Ukrainian army” of the Internet.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister, the investigation is still ongoing, but already there is much indicating that this action fits within the framework of the new Russian sabotage doctrine.

Moscow has not yet commented on this statement.

A fire broke out at a satellite communications station in the village of Wola Krobowska, 40 kilometers south of Warsaw, on Wednesday evening. There was no need to stop the station.

Through this station, as Deputy Prime Minister Gavkovsky explained, Internet traffic passes between satellites and ground-based Starlink terminals, which are also used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Danish intelligence warning

Meanwhile, Denmark's Military and Foreign Intelligence Service released a report on Thursday saying it expects Russia's hybrid warfare to expand in the coming months.

“In the coming months, Russia will continue to increase the scale of its hybrid warfare, increasing its attacks on Western countries and NATO, and the consequences of these actions for the affected states will be more serious than in the past,” the Reuters agency quotes the report.

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According to Danish intelligence, a direct Russian attack on any NATO country in the near future is extremely unlikely, but the risk of armed provocations on a limited scale is growing, although it is now low.

In recent weeks, politicians and experts from several NATO countries have stated that Russia may be preparing serious actions against NATO countries in order to test the alliance’s strength and at the same time its readiness to continue to help Ukraine.

On Monday, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo wrote that, according to information it received from a source close to the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense, US intelligence had warned several European countries that Russia was preparing a drone attack on Spain, France or Italy.

According to the newspaper, according to the Americans, drones can be launched from a merchant ship, hiding them in a container.

Germany in early September accused Russia of direct involvement in an attempted drone attack on Ukrainian cargo planes at Leipzig-Halle airport.

In mid-September, French President Emmanuel Macron urgently convened the country's Defense Council, then held a meeting with the leaders of all parties and ordered to strengthen the protection of critical infrastructure from cyber attacks and drones.

On Wednesday in Poland, in addition to the fire at the Starlink station, there was another incident: a Russian military helicopter briefly flew into its airspace, causing Polish fighters to take off.

The Russian leadership invariably denies that it is preparing any actions or sabotage against NATO countries.

151 incidents in four years

Over the course of four years, from February 2022 to February 2026, the Bratislava-based analytical center Globsec counted 151 Russian-related incidents in different European countries - sabotage or other incidents that fit into the framework of a hybrid war.

At the same time, Globsec noted that these are cases when one can speak with a high degree of confidence about Russia’s involvement, but in reality, according to the center, there may be much more such actions. To carry them out, Russian intelligence services most often recruit outsiders, which makes it difficult to identify connections with Russia and allows Moscow to deny its existence.

According to Globsec's calculations, of the 172 people involved in these 151 incidents, 95% had no formal ties to Russian intelligence services.

“It creates a certain distance between them and Russia,” says Emily Ferris, an analyst at Britain's Royal Defense Studies Institute (RUSI). “It takes longer to figure out all the details, so it complicates [the investigation].”