Due to the growing threat of Russian sabotage of critical infrastructure facilities in European Union countries and two diversions on the Warsaw-Lublin railway, Poland is sending 10.000 soldiers to guard the railways as of midnight, in Operation Horizon, the authorities announced.
Operation Horizon and the involvement of the army in protecting key Polish infrastructure is the reaction of the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk to two sabotage operations on the Warsaw-Lublin railway, for which the prosecution has accused two Ukrainian citizens, who, according to the investigation, were collaborators of Russian intelligence services.
"We have a lot of railways in Poland and it is physically impossible for the army to protect everything. We need to define key areas for the functioning of the state and for sending aid to Ukraine," said General Krzysztof Krul about Operation Horizon, in which around 10.000 soldiers will cooperate with the police and the Railway Guard in securing the railways.
Members of the Territorial Defense are also entering the field, and military drones and army helicopters will patrol the railways in addition to soldiers, along with police.
"Soldiers will be at the most important traffic junctions that are a priority. We simply have to be visible. Being seen is also an element of this operation. Its goal is to prevent and deter terrorists who are financed and given orders by our opponents in the East from engaging in any attacks on our infrastructure at all," General Krul told the PAP news agency.
Last weekend, on the Warsaw-Lublin railway, which is also crucial for transporting Western aid to Ukraine, a section of the tracks was blown up with explosives in one place, while in another, a train with almost 500 passengers was stopped by the train driver on Sunday after encountering 60 meters of destroyed electrical lines.
Two Ukrainians, one already convicted in Lviv for sabotage at a drone factory and the other a resident of Donbass living in Belarus, entered Poland this fall before the sabotage and fled to Belarus immediately after it, according to the Polish investigation.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to urgently form a special body for the exchange of intelligence and police data to prevent terrorists and Russian mercenaries with Ukrainian citizenship from entering Poland without problems just because Ukraine has not handed over the data to Poland or issued an arrest warrant through Interpol.
Poland yesterday requested in a note from Russia and Belarus to extradite the accused direct perpetrators of the sabotage on the railway, while at least four of their accomplices have been arrested in Poland.
They are 41-year-old Ukrainian Yevheniy Ivanov, convicted in May in Lviv for participating in the bombing of a military drone factory last year on the orders of the Russian intelligence service GRU, and Ukrainian citizen Oleksandr Kononov, from Donbass.
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