Poland charges Ukrainian with assisting in Russian rail sabotage

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Polish prosecutors have charged a Ukrainian man with assisting in the recent sabotage of a rail line in Poland on behalf of Russia. He is the first person to directly hear charges in the case, after the two main suspects fled to Belarus immediately after the incident.

On Monday, the National Prosecutor’s Office announced that a Ukrainian citizen, named only as Volodymyr B. under Polish privacy law, had on 22 November been charged with working on behalf of Russian intelligence and providing assistance to the direct perpetrators of the rail sabotage, which took place on 15-16 November.

That assistance included Volodymyr B. taking one of the main perpetrators, Yevhenii I., to the planned area of sabotage in September, enabling him to carry out reconnaissance and choose a place to plant the explosives and metal device later used in an attempt to derail trains, as well as a recording device.

Volodymyr B. had been detained on 20 November by police officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBŚP), after they had obtained evidence of his involvement in the crime. After charges were filed, he was questioned by prosecutors as a suspect and a court approved his further detention.

On 18 November, two days after the sabotage was discovered, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that it had been carried out by two Ukrainians working on behalf of Russia, who had immediately fled over the border into Belarus.

The following day, prosecutors named them the pair as Oleksandr K. and Yevhenii I., in keeping with Polish privacy law. However, Polish media outlets have fully identified the suspects as Yevhenii Ivanov and Oleksandr Kononov.

Prosecutors have drafted charges against the pair and, on 20 November, Poland issued a diplomatic note to Belarus asking that it hand them over. However, given Belarus’s close relationship with Russia, the prospects of extradition appear slim.

Meanwhile, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, ordered Russia to close its consulate in Gdańsk – the last one it was allowed to operate in Poland – in retaliation for the sabotage.

Poland has in recent years been hit with a series of acts of sabotage carried out by operatives – often Ukrainians and Belarusians – recruited by Russia.

Early on Monday, Onet, a leading news website, reported, based on unnamed sources, that four Ukrainians detained in Poland last week on suspicion of assisting in the rail sabotage have already been released after prosecutors found that they had not knowingly aided the saboteurs.

Subsequently, the spokesman for the National Prosecutor’s Office, Przemysław Nowak, confirmed that “the evidence collected did not provide grounds to charge them with participation in the acts of sabotage of 15-16 November”.

However, one of them was charged in relation to a separate incident in which he was found to have been hiding documents, including a Russian passport, said Nowak, quoted by broadcaster TVN.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Kołobrzeg Policja (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.